I am going to go back a little and wrap up the final question in my topic-generating exercise of weeks ago.

In a quick follow up to her question on my Meyers-Briggs personality type, Bub and Pie asks:

Are you an optimist or a pessimist?

If you ask my husband about my status in this particular scale, he will probably give you an entirely different answer, because, first of all, he is one of those people who never wakes up to a bad day and manages to process through life without one modicum of self doubt, EVER.   Some people would call such folks narcissists, but he is too basically kind and generous to fall into that category.  I prefer to use the term “self-aware”.  My husband is very self-aware.

Secondly, I am NOT one of those gushing oh-by-gosh-by-golly-isn’t-life-wonderful wide-dewey-eyed optimists.  But I am, at the end of the day, an optimist.

I am one of these people that acknowledges that there are days when life serves you up far, far more lemons than you realistically need to make lemonade for personal consumption.  Or even to share with your friends.  But I also march resolutely through life with the firm commitment that if you can just manage to juggle those lemons until bedtime, that when you wake up one morning they eventually will, they absolutely HAVE to, become roses.

I think my obsession with cleaning is closely linked to my “ever upward” outlook on life.  Every morning is a clean slate for me, a chance to start over and be the person I always wanted to be.   It’s remarkably similar to the joy I get from the hard work necessary to make something old look new, to bring order into chaos.  I fundamentally know that it is just going to get dirty, disorganized and broken again anyway, but it doesn’t keep me from being strangely satisfied at looking at a clean sparkling tub, a made bed, or a mended toy.  It’s like starting over, one tiny bit at a time.  People obsessed with cleaning can never really be pessimists.  Pessimists wouldn’t see the point.

I also think it is a hereditary sort of optimism.  One that gets handed down to those of Nordic stock deep in core of our being.  Listen to “A Prairie Home Companion” and you will understand what I mean.  You either “get” it, or you don’t.  It’s the grim, determined kind of optimism that allowed the Vikings to settle Iceland and Greenland.  You get out of a boat after weeks on tossing, frozen, northern seas, step out onto a plain of rock and moss as far as the eye can see, and think “You know, I will put a vegetable garden right here, and a chicken coop would look good over there…”  That’s a kind of optimism that can only be explained by genetics.

It’s probably the same kind of optimism that accounts for Kansas.

Think about it.