Complex

Post #184: Dedicated to: Baby Proof; by Emily Giffin

I think one of the favorite questions interviewers like to ask is: what is your best/worst quality? It's something I hate answering. I feel like my closest friends could answer that much more accurately than I ever could. Or rather – my closest friends can see my best qualities more clearly than I ever will. And all I can see are my worst qualities, like they're pixelated after being zoomed in too much.

I remember I was asked what my worst quality was in high school during an interview and couldn't, for the life of me, think of one thing on the spot. (The interview, coincidentally, didn't go that well. I really am not a great interviewer. At all.) I can't even honestly remember what I said. All I know is, an hour after the interview I realized the perfect worst quality (all the while cursing my luck that I couldn't think of it at the time) – that I was competitive.

Oddly enough, being competitive serves as a best and a worst quality. Then, when you think about it, almost everything can be both a best and a worst trait. You're happy, but too happy such that you are blind to anything sad or bad. You're dedicated, but sometimes too dedicated and a work-a-holic. You're kind, but too kind and thus taken advantage of. See what I mean?

Anyway, I've come to realize (apart from the fact that I am a fairly complex person) that one of the most constant best/worst qualities I have is hope. I'm aware of its pros/cons. One of my favorite quotes, from the movie Milk: "You cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living." That kind of sums it all up. I'm aware that too much hope is definitely dangerous, and in my case is probably very well caused by all those chick flicks/books I read that fill my head with a fantastical idea of a perfect life – and, what's more, lead me to hope that that kind of perfect life exists out there for me. But to be without hope (and hope for anything, really – hope that you will improve your writing, hope for a newborn child, hope that the war will soon end), and to be completely devoid of hope...is that really a life worth living? Who wants to live a life spent thinking that it's not going to get better in the end?

No, it's not realism. It's cynicism.

And I guess that just makes me an optimist.