The Optimist vs. Pessimist - There must be a Pony!

The Story of “There must be a Pony” by Jim Kirkwood is a favorite of mine. There have been many variations of the cover story which appears on the front of the book as well as jokes which have been adapted from it. For me, it can reflect our way of being. Is the glass half empty or half full? How we choose to reflect on life can affect our successes and failures. A lot of the hesitation we might have is usually just our negative interpretations. By getting elevation and reflecting on the tasks in hand, recognizing that in reality there are no obstacles to success other than those that we may place in our own way.

The short story goes like so. A family had twin boys whose only resemblance to each other was their looks. If one felt it was too hot, the other thought it was too cold. If one said the TV was too loud, the other claimed the volume needed to be turned up. Opposite in every way, one was an eternal optimist, the other a doom and gloom pessimist.

Just to see what would happen, on the twins' birthday their father decided to undertake an experiment.

He loaded the pessimist's room with every imaginable toy and game a child could dream of. The optimist's room he loaded with horse manure.

That night the father passed by the pessimist's room and found him sitting amid his new gifts crying bitterly.

"Why are you crying?" the father asked.

"Because I don’t understand why this is happening, my friends will be jealous, I'll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff, I'll constantly need batteries, and my toys will eventually get broken." answered the pessimist twin.

Passing the optimist twin's room, the father found him dancing for joy in the pile of manure, covered from head to toe in the unpleasant substance.

"What are you so happy about?" he asked.

To which his optimist twin replied, "With all this house crap around, there's got to be a pony in here somewhere!"