The Optimist Creed
My oldest daughter will start high school this month and in anticipation of that, she had athletic tryouts that had me dropping her off and picking her up at Pinecrest this week. As I drove her to school on Wednesday morning, I realized that that day was the start of a 16-year relationship with Pinecrest. With the age spacing of my children, I will spend 16 consecutive years cheering for the Pinecrest Patriots before my youngest son, currently age 2, graduates. It will be an exciting and wonderful season of life!
As a new chapter begins for my family, I sought out an item that used to hang in my bedroom when I was in high school. I was inspired from a trip I took earlier in July to attend the American Guild of Organists National Convention in St. Louis. As I was walking from the Cathedral Basilica back to my hotel following a brilliant organ recital, I passed a building that housed an Optimist International club. It brought back a flood of memories as at my 8th-grade graduation, I was awarded the Optimist Award for the Emge-Ellis class of 1992. I can still remember the tremendous surprise I felt at hearing my name announced in the Belleville Area College Gymnasium, where our 8th grade graduation was held, and then being presented the award by the Belleville-Westside Optimist Club. The award was a very handsome plaque with the Optimist Creed. After receiving it, I proudly hung it on my bedroom wall, and for the next four years of high school, read it nearly every day.
This week, as our family enters this new educational season, I found that old award, stored in a box of childhood treasures for more than two decades.
The plaque reads as follows:
The Optimist Creed
Promise Yourself
To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel that there is something in them.
To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.
To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.
To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
While the Optimist Creed, written by Christian D. Larson, is intentionally secular-friendly as a civil pledge for service club members, it is embedded with Christian themes. The promise "to make all your friends feel that there is something in them" mirrors biblical calls to build one another up in love and recognize the inherent value in every person. Directing oneself to be "too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear…" aligns with scriptural admonitions against anxiety and wrath. The instruction "to forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future" echoes the apostle Paul’s focus on forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. The promise to focus entirely on self-improvement so as "to have no time to criticize others" parallels the New Testament teaching to remove the log from one’s own eye before judging a neighbor.
As a new school year starts in August, and as a new programmatic year begins in September, it is an opportunity for me to renew my commitment to be a positive presence in my role as parent, and as a musical leader in this community. I’ve decided that it’s time for the old award to go back up on the wall. The wisdom it contains merits regularity of reading. Maybe it’ll inspire others, too.