The future is bright, the future is bleak. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Plenty, say the pundits who have talked to hundreds of people in the UAE and the region to gauge consumer confidence.
Many are very positive about the future and many are not. Asians have been found to be more buoyant about their prospects than their western brethren and even as salaries have not kept up with inflation people are still planning to invest in property, buy new cars and go on a holiday of a lifetime.
So what is it with some people who stay optimistic through thick and thin? Why is it that sometimes even when the sky is falling on our heads and the US is getting ready to play war games in the region's waters do we stay sanguine?
A wise old friend of mine told me that all human beings carry hope in their bloodstreams. And when things go wrong, that hope is used appropriately or not.
Examples he provided included some people who have everything going for them but they can't stop moaning about their lives, their jobs, their bosses, their partners or the weather. And then there are others who have very little but are happy anyway because they do not have the time to be unhappy.
Just like the world is made of negative and positive energies, the wise man said, hope too is the same. People are either positively hopeful or negatively hopeless and why people behave the way they do will be hopefully understood (in retrospect) some time in the future.
Reminds me of young children who I asked what they would like to be when they grew up. Not one of them said: I want to be poor, sick, uneducated, orphaned or homeless.
Each one however did say rich, famous, great looking, and a lawyer, a doctor, all joyful, all hopeful and affirmative.
My wise old friend is right. How can anyone in the UAE not be encouraged by the future. Like any other country it has its ups and downs but it lives, it breathes, it hopes and it grows.
Nirmala Janssen
editor@alnisrmedia.com
www.xpress4me.com/letters
