BERNARD:

The True Meaning of Optimism

 

Optimism does not mean that everything will be great. It means that we can respond to everything with greatness.It was a dreadful winter day, even by Michigan standards. The early morning sunlight disappeared behind enormous clouds that dumped hard snow onto roads already turning treacherous. Had it been a school day, children would have awakened delighted by the possibility of a snow day. But this was Sunday, and a special one. The children of Kids Kicking Cancer had been invited to an end-of-the-year holiday party hosted by the Macomb Area Optimist Club.The prudent thing was to cancel. An early call to the club leadership indicated, however, that the Optimists were still - naturally - optimistic. It was too late to reach every family, and the party would go forward. Somewhere, I thought, there must be a Pessimist Club. Its members would simply be optimists with experience. My experience told me that very few of our children would make it through that storm.After a long and difficult drive, I reached the school. Beneath the steadily falling snow, I could make out the shapes of cars - a great many cars. The parents had decided that cancer had already canceled enough of their children's lives. There would be plenty of time to be trapped at home or confined in a hospital. Today, they were coming to celebrate. Inside, the gymnasium was packed. The smiles seemed capable of melting the frozen tundra outside.Toward the end of the party, I saw ten-year-old Bernard Johnson being pushed toward the microphone by his twin sister, Brittany. Bernard had been part of our program for almost a year and a half. He had already endured more loss than many people face in a lifetime. His mother had left when he was very young. His father died shortly after the twins' eighth birthday. Their uncle died the next year - the same year Bernard was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. The tumor had taken away his ability to walk and was slowly stealing movement from the rest of his body.Yet Bernard did not approach that microphone to speak about what had been taken from him. He wanted to give something away.THE TRUE MEANING OF OPTIMISM"Hi, my name's Bernard," he began. He thanked the Optimists for the party and then thanked Kids Kicking Cancer for becoming part of his family. Our martial arts therapists stood around the room listening, and there was not a dry eye among them. Bernard's voice grew stronger. "I want to teach you what we do in Kids Kicking Cancer. You can breathe in the light, which is your essence, and blow out the darkness. You can do this no matter what is going on in your life."He then demonstrated the breathing technique. He lifted his body with the breath, held it, and slowly released the air along with the tension, fear, and darkness. Four hundred people followed the instructions of a child who could no longer lift his own feet. For several quiet moments, the entire auditorium breathed with him.Taking the microphone after Bernard was not easy. I looked out at an audience that had just been lifted by a ten-year-old sitting in a wheelchair. I began by thanking the volunteers, partly because I needed time to compose myself. Then the meaning of what we had witnessed became clear."Optimism does not mean that everything is going to be great," I said. "Optimism means that we can respond to everything with greatness."Bernard could not choose the road on which his life had been placed. He could not command his legs to move or order the tumor to disappear. But he could choose what he would do with that moment. He could turn pain into a lesson, dependence into leadership, and a wheelchair into a teacher's platform.We often imagine optimism as the belief that the story will end exactly as we wish. Bernard taught something far deeper. Optimism is not a prediction about tomorrow. It is a decision about who we will be today. It is the conviction that even when we cannot control what happens to us, we can still bring light into the way we respond.Bernard's body was losing power, but Bernard was becoming more powerful. He had discovered his purpose: to teach the world. And on a storm-filled Michigan afternoon, he did exactly that.