Four-year-old's Definition of Optimism

A week ago I was on a train from New Delhi to Kanpur. As the train whizzed along the outskirts of Delhi it momentarily halted near a wasteland. Needless to say it was full of garbage, covered with wild bushes with a small murky water body in the center. Obviously it was a dumping ground for all the waste human beings can generate. Something I wouldn't have given a second look had it not been for what I heard next.

"Itni achchi jagah main itna saara kooda, (Such a beautiful place but so much waste covering it)" remarked a child, staring out of the window with curious eyes. Of course his parents didn't pay any heed to this. But this simple observation stuck with me for sometime. It made me take a second look at the land. Now I noticed it was a green patch of land with some wild plants and a few lotuses floating in the water. Surrounded by a lot of half-constructed houses this land may have been a small playground. I could even make out a few wild flowers that had sprung up between the plastic waste. Of course the land was still a dump but my outlook had changed. I was looking at all the majestic possibilities instead of the mundane reality. Alas, the train had to move on.

Is this the simplest form of definition of optimism? Seeing things not as they are but as they could be. That's how that child looked at the wasteland. He found beauty in a seemingly hopeless piece of land. It needed his simple words to change my outlook about something so obvious. A simple parallel drawn between the wasteland and our life opens newer horizons for implications of the four-year-old's words. It made me think how many times in my life I have looked at a situation and shirked back to avoid getting myself dirty. Or how many times my preconceived notions have prevented me from opening to newer relationships or finding new things. Or the innumerable times I have given up out of despair, frustration or pure sloth. If during these times I had tried to block out the dump and worked more on the possibilities, I would have discovered newer sources of joy.

I wish I could just keep looking for the possibilities even when everything seems to be a waste. 

Just a small confession here: I made a smart guess about that kid's age so he could be even three or five! But it doesn't make his words less impressive; does it?