Optimism is a decision. There's never enough positivity in life to automatically prove that things will end well. If we simply go with the flow, there will be enough frustration and pain to deter us from completing things. There may be things that excite us so much that we can't fail, because our motivation towards them is endless. But most things in life are not like that. And even when something gives us this much energy, it's rare that the circumstances let us perfect it. On the other hand, if we managed to accomplish it to a good-enough level, there's rarely enough motivation to keep perfecting it.

Pessimism is how we get deterred from accomplishing and perfecting something. If we think we've invested a lot of good into it, and things may have improved but not to the level we expected, we often see that as a proof that it's not worth further effort. We don't genuinely believe there will be qualitative leaps farther ahead if we just don't give up. And when deciding that, we think we're being rational.

But life is non-linear. Life's reaction to our work is not "more of the same". Sometimes no matter how hard we try we can't get "the same" to ever repeat. Other times, we accidentally happen to hit some lucky spot and get an outcome that greatly surpasses our investment. Sometimes our long-term effort guarantees that there will be stable improvements in the reality around us, but maybe not enough to want to keep going. After all we often can't be sure what we're doing is right for us. For example, what if we're going in the wrong direction altogether? And if we consider that there's not enough proof this is the right path, we may (rationally) abandon it.

But why do we think life is meant to meet our expectations? And why do we think it's a good thing if it does? Doesn't it make us infinitely bored? Don't we strive if there's some risk involved, along with a chance that our actions will revolutionize things in a good way? Don't we often underestimate how useful the "bad" outcome is?

Decision to learn new unique lessons from "bad" outcome is optimism.

We think that if reality is "fighting back", then we're doing something wrong. We think that pain means we're on the wrong track, and for some reason we believe that less pain and more pleasure is better. But that worldview is infantile. It only reacts to immediate events right in front of us, without seeing the bigger picture, without long-term understanding and plans. How do we know there's substance in our understanding and plans, how do we know it's possible to ever be sure about the future? By testing our current concept of reality... and improving it if it's flawed. Decision that it's possible to objectively improve your worldview and get better results - is optimism.

Pessimism is infantile, because it expects reality to present us with good things automatically, and then when reality seemingly doesn't (at all, or anymore), it gives up. It's a negative reaction to immediate events. Sometimes there may even be a lot of them, and they may look like an actual reliable trend proving that it's not worth it in the end. But why do we think we're meant to fully trust that proof?

Because giving up feels better in the moment. We decide to trust it fully because we haven't exhausted 100% of all our options to try and do it our way. We let go of the dream that has already led us to some verifiable improvements. And we make a decision that the future is not going to give us enough improvements to justify the hardship.

Now there are situations when we simply don't have anything more to give. But just like with all things related to pushing the limits, our estimation of our own limits has never ever been true. In fact, all jobs that have famous stunning achievements in their history, actively rely on people pushing themselves way beyond their perceived limits, and succeeding. Yes there are cases when somebody has invested their entire life into finding a cure for some deadly disease and never found it. But the whole point of people being social creatures is that every single achievement stands on the shoulders of giants. All of our work as a civilization is always conjoint. Not even a single human can properly grow up without lots of conjoint efforts of other people. Conjoint effort is our entire nature, regardless of whether it's conscious or not.

Sure we may not see the revolutionary results of our own revolutionary efforts. But we have other people's past revolutionary efforts at our disposal, and they may have not seen their results either. Their dream motivated them to apply those efforts. And sometimes they would also think that it's not worth it in the end. They've done the legwork so we don't have to repeat it. But if we're pessimistic about our own contribution, we may end up not bringing their work to eventual success that they've never seen. Or maybe they did realize they have very low chance of seeing it during their lifespan, but they kept working nonetheless because they knew workers after them could finish it and save the world.

Our infantile mind tells us that life without pain and frustration is possible, and it's the world's fault that we don't have it. Or that it's our own fault that we don't have it. Or both. But for some reason it never tells us to use this pain as a tool.

Now what does that even mean? Our infantile mind fears pain and absolutizes it. When we feel it, it tries to convince us to run away from it so it stops. But without enough experience in the real world, it may mistakenly lead us into even more pain due to our visceral reactions. To avoid even more pain, one needs to be smart, which requires experience. And we can't get experienced if we can't endure pain.

Real high-level professionals are often blunt and relentless. And immoral people are also often blunt and relentless. On the surface it may look too similar to ever respect the former. The key difference is whether they apply pain to others as a goal in itself, or as a tool with some different goal in mind.

Immoral people often have incredibly fragile ego, they absolutize themselves and fear pain. They can't endure it, so they can't get experienced enough in the nuances of life to avoid further pain in the future. So that exact further pain in the future pushes them further into their imaginary capsule of sweet self-delusion and irresponsible hate towards objective reality. So they are either rude to others due to fear of pain, or due to delusion and ignorance. They apply pain to others to deter them from something vague that they're doing "wrong", but there are no concrete words to describe what it is they're doing and why it's wrong objectively. So ultimately, making others suffer is their only response to perceived imperfection of reality. And they're so invested into it that it becomes clear they don't have any higher level goals they use it for, yet they can't detach from it. So it becomes the only outcome, and effectively the only goal.

On the other hand, craft masters loved their craft so much that they managed to perfect it no matter the pain. Sure the pain did matter in the literal sense, but that pain ended up being an essential part of the learning curve. It made them truly understand the cost of perfection, it made them so efficient that pain is minimal. They learned efficiency the hard way thanks to this pain. So they can now remain responsible and self-disciplined without this pain having to repeat. But they know for sure that once they get too confident and blind to further lessons, they risk losing everything. The only way to remain alive and welcome is to keep learning for your entire life. And in order to learn to learn, we require pain in our direct first-hand experience. And we require ability to decide to use it as a tool on our overall positive path.

We are only able to risk and learn to perform better than before if we embrace the danger of future pain. If we make pain our friend. If we take it professionally, not personally. If we use it to understand what other people feel on this path too, and to make it easier for them. But if they have a flaw that they don't want to fix, they may have to learn to make this decision too - to take immediate pain as a lesson to avoid further pain in the future, or to run away from it and become an even weaker person. And for sure that weaker person will try to shift the responsibility and suffering onto other people, resulting in even more overall pain in the world.

So ability to endure pain as a part of the lesson is in itself empathy. And knowing this negative side of mastery from the inside is the only way to protect others from too much pain... unless they've made a decision that they're ready to learn further from it.

Weak immoral people can't survive the pain they're causing others, but they keep causing it because they think it's their way to escape their own due pain (which makes them dodge learning any life lessons too). On the other hand, emphatic leaders have already been through the pain their students are having, and they've learned to grow through it, so that's what you're trying to teach too.