Optimism & Wisdom

When browsing the web today, I stumbled across a quote by Charles Dickens. It read "A loving heart is the truest wisdom." This provoked alot of stirring within my head. It made me think of a few different people that I know. I know someone who loves with everything they have, they love life, the people in their life, they love culture, they love everything in moderation... and they are one of the most wise, and smart people I know. The other person who came into my mind. This person does not love as much as they should, they criticize, they pick apart, they judge, they find the flaws in everything rather than embrace things and love the good in things, in life, in their friends/family, in our culture, our world. Although this person is not unintelligent, they are not wise. I think that this is what Mr. Dickens meant when he said those words. If you love, appreciate, and see the good in things, you let yourself be wiser and more knowledgeable about how things really are. But if you refuse to love and appreciate, you're closing your eyes to the world, and robbing yourself of wisdom, clarity, and knowledge. I guess I could go as far as thinking that this applies to optimism and pessimism. If you are optimistic you open your eyes to possibilities, these possibilities leading to opportunities, these opportunities leaving room for improvement, this improvement building onto your wisdom. But if you are pessimistic, you close your eyes to these possibilities, blocking off all paths of the roads you could take in life, leaving you with nothing but ignorance. So what I'm getting at is, maybe we should start trying to find the good in every situation, not only to ease our minds, and keep light in the situations, but to better ourselves. I guess this is just one of those life lessons I needed to come across. It's long overdue but better later than never.