Clear-eyed Cynic

There is an even-handed cynic in me who views the world without its happy overlaid facades, who pierces through plastic smiles with emotionless ease, who sees the half-truths and hears the hidden escape clauses in capital-lettered speeches.

Then there is the idealist in me who tempers the harshness of the cynic’s (sadly correct) calculations. The idealist hopes for a day happy facades are not necessary, when smiles are made of flesh, and when speeches are real, unvarnished and the speaker, above all, gladly unshielded.

I am grateful for my cynic, who I think grants me both Clearsight and Truesight (the ability to see everything in its place and the ability to see everything as it truly is, respectively). If not for him I would be dashed, broken, and a morose pessimist—which is far worse than what a cynic is, for a pessimist is unreasonably depressed and cautious, whereas a cynic is only as proportionally wary as his senses tell him is fit.

I am also grateful for my idealist. If not for him my cynic would have driven me mad and jaded with his harsh, if accurate, predictions, evaluations of folly (anyone’s), denunciations of lies and rapid dispelling of illusions. The idealist in me grants succor from the cynic, shows visions of things that are not, yet could come to be. Whereas the cynic tears down the lies of the world, leaving all things empty and lifeless in my sight, the idealist takes the blank devastated slate that the cynic leaves behind and breathes new life, new visions into it, repopulating the aftermath of Eden.

I thank them both, my cynical and idealistic halves, for their contributions. I am glad to be a cynical idealist, and an idealistic cynic.