Life, or a view of it.

Realism: the doctrine that the external world exists independently of perception; in logic, the doctrine that universal or class ideas (eg, man) have objective realities corresponding to them.

Idealism: the view that the existence of objects depends wholly or in part on the minds of those perceiving them or that reality is composed of minds and their states.

Fatalism: is, roughly, the view that the future is already set and therefore, that human deliberation and actions are pointless because things have to be the way they have to be.

Optimism: is a lifeview where one looks upon the world as a positive place. Optimists generally believe that people are inherently good. They have a "positive" outlook on life, believing that given time, things will work out in the end.

Pessimism: generally, describes a belief that things are bad, and tend to become worse; or that looks to the eventual triumph of evil over good; it contrasts with optimism, the contrary belief in the goodness and betterment of things generally. Philosophical pessimism describes a tendency to believe that the life has a negative value, or that this world is as bad as it could possibly be.

Proactive: controlling a situation by causing something to happen rather than waiting to respond to it after it happens

I am a proactive optimist. My mother is an optimist. My father is a true blue idealist. My sister is a pessimist. My husband is, ironically, a proactive fatalist. My three best friends are an idealist, a proactive realist and a proactive optimist. i'd say i have the gamut covered, eh?

there are many other philosophical views of life, but i sort of deduced that these are the most prominant. i added proactive b/c i feel that it is a clarifying adjective/verb. Some people have misdiagnosed me as a realist, but its only b/c i'm proactive.

i'm trying to decide if being proactive is a good thing. i know that it's not entirely bad, but it's not always healthy to over-anticipate. i get personal satisfaction out of planning and double checking, but i am also in love with spontinaiety (as long as it falls in a plausible realm of my prepared-ness). like, when i go on vacation, say i meet some new friends and we go out on the town, wherever the wind blows us.... if they happen to say, "we're all doing drugs now!" or "STRIP CLUB!" i know i wouldnt do it. even if it was just a lark, it doesnt fall in my normal lifestyle or in the category of "things i want to do some day". i guess it's a healthy choice.

what do you think you are? for those of you who know me, do you think i diagnosed friends & family correctly?