S is for Sensitivity

I always find myself calm and cheerful in the most heart-rending situation. Not that I enjoy being in a dreadful condition, or seeing other people be the same, it’s just not me to be vexed. I consider my enormous amount of optimism as a gift. A gift that would bring light to any dark trail I might traverse. My everyday dilemmas, no matter how tumultuous, are met with my ridiculous trademark grin. To the point that most people find me insensitive.

You see there is a fine line between sensitivity and optimism. If someone approaches me and declares he has cancer, and is about to die the following day, I’d tell him to cheer up and enjoy the remaining 24 hours that other people can’t do simply because they’re too busy saving up for their future until they end up in a grave with an epitaph that reads “Here lies a man who wanted to be happy tomorrow.” That’s me being optimistic.

But if I tell him something to the effect of, “Hear that sound? Deathtrain’s coming and the last stop, OMG, is you!”, that’s just being insensitive.

Consider the following situation and tell me if I’m being optimistic or just plain unreasonably insensitive:

• My brother met an accident last weekend while riding on his motorcycle and woke up in the hospital with bruises and wounds and a mangled right leg. He couldn’t remember what happened that night and when he asked me how bad he was, I told him, “On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give it a three. Mainly because the doctor said you’ll be needing three stitches on your forehead and three thousand bucks for the CT scan.”
• On one of our get-togethers, fellow TMB editor Bim was so intoxicated when he decided to step outside the bar to get some air. The rest, save for yours truly, were so worried that he might walk towards the road and get hit by a speeding truck. I, on the other hand, bluntly told the guys that I was worried about who’s going to clean the scattered brain pieces and body parts off the street if Bim gets ran over by a speeding truck. (Ok now that one’s being utterly insensitive.)
• I was eating with one of my female officemates when she brought up her “special friend”(which kids nowadays conveniently refer to as “pseudo-boyfriend”). The dude has a girlfriend, which means my female friend is a pseudo-girlfriend. She was griping that the pseudo-guy was not using the expensive perfume she gave him for his birthday, and that he just keeps it in his office locker. I loosely told her not to be saddened for he might find the need to use it should his real girlfriend drops by the office one of these days.

So maybe that fine line between sensitivity and optimism is sort of blurred in my point of view. Perhaps a well-placed kick in the head (or in the nuts) should help me understand.