Cynicism is one step away from misery

The world we live in is far from perfect and, although everyone at some early stage of their lives was an idealist, little by little they have become accustomed to the harsh reality that perfection is an illusion. So we all become cynical about this and that from time to time, but that doesn’t make us true cynics. That doesn’t make us the type of people who distrust human nature and its motives. We do not find fault with everyone and everything. Because that’s what cynics do. They believe there is no morality and honesty behind human actions and nothing is worth happening since it is motivated by selfishness.

The overwhelming characteristic of cynics, however, is not that they are completely negative people. It is that they are totally unhappy. Happiness is definitely not their goal. At some point in their lives, they must have been deeply wounded and cynicism is a defensive mechanism to deal with what hurts them, instead of coping with their true emotions. That’s the only plausible explanation I can come up with to account for that bitter attitude towards life. Cynicism may start with a negative aspect of life and then spread to life as a whole. Cynics tend to treat in a hostile way everyone and everything. Family, relatives, and friends all fall prey to their pessimism.

As a result, the negativity that overwhelms this category of people wears on every institution of life, especially friendship. Cynics end up alone and lonely. Nobody wants to hang out with them. The people who invite them to parties become fewer and fewer and this adds up to their notion of humankind consisting only of bastards.

Cynicism also makes people narrow-minded and shortens their horizons. They don’t pay attention to other people and most of all they don’t pay attention to life. Why should they do that, anyway, since they have made up their mind about life before experiencing it? Everything according to their absurd sense of pessimism sucks so why should they care about what’s going on around them? It becomes totally difficult for them to be open to anything new and that makes them difficult in creativity matter and completely inflexible. That among other things can have a great impact on their job performance.

Poor job performance and the way other employees, especially fast trackers, and managers treat cynics add to their misery. The workplace must be free of negative thinking. Spirit and morale must be high. But cynics spoil that. Cynicism is a virus that can become dangerously contagious. Management doesn’t want that. It reduces productivity. There is a line in companies to consider cynics losers. They are isolated and do not stand a chance of being promoted. The bitterness resulting from that intensifies pessimism in cynics. They interpret the situation with comments like “ The company doesn’t care about us” or “ Managers lie” and so on and so forth. So what’s left to make a person happy if he is deprived of friends and job satisfaction?

Of course, an argument in favor of cynicism could be that the meaning of life is not to be found in the comfortable happiness of a secure home with family and children and a well-paid job. People around us are fed from garbage bins and some lose their homes because they owe to banks. Fanatics execute their fellow human beings because they worship a different god or they are homosexuals. What good is there in all that? Where can we find hope in this world which is steadily deteriorating? How can we not be cynics and pessimists?

Well, my answer is that what matters in this world is to chase that glimmer of hope that will allow us to turn things slightly around. That’s the meaning of life. Try to change things even if maths proves you cannot. Being cynical is only one step of hopelessness and we don’t want that.