Ira's Interdimensional Push On Going Bright Side #4

Goooood evening, I met this guy Berri at Neot Seminar when I was in Israel three years ago and he had this helpless optimism about him. Even when he spent his entire day squeegeeing the kibbutz he chose to look at the bright side - he had a family, was part of community, felt connected, and had his own choice to choose joy no matter what. At the time it all felt a bit delusional and ripe for being taken advantage of, but now it *really* feels delusional and especially ripe for being taken advantage of!! Even so, there’s a certain self-fulfilling beauty about this mindset that is undeniable to the point where I started giving it a go myself and here are the top three ways that I chose to look at the good these last two weeks when there was boundless nuance to see: 1. Letting Chat GPT take the wheel: I’ve been querying my ass off with one artificial intelligence engine or another these days. Part of me can’t remember how I enduured without it and another part is squirming in my chair wondering if I’m dingling some dude’s tap in [Newton County, Georgia](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/technology/meta-data-center-water.html)! Chat GPT itself claims that it’s just a tool that humans will use for good or evil as per usual and that there’s no fear of an iRobot scenario playing out, but even so, the environmental damage, opportunity for even more wealth inequality than we already have, and high likelihood of brain withering across the species seems inevitable. To be honest, I’ve been chatting with GPT and the REPLIT agent a lot about how to fix bugs and build features on this website which at this point makes me wonder if I even built IraSeidman.com or if I just kept telling AI how it should build it better. For now, there’s an optimistic scenario that I’m holding onto where we can make so much progress with this tool that it will help our old problems and then some of new ones that get created, as history has unfolded before - time and time again. 2. Going on tour: My, now, fiancé (!!!), flew to New York on August 14th and we immediately started doing the summer rounds, if you don’t count a sleepless night and brief blitz at the Metro Diner with Sir Tyler. We were in the Berkshires, Adirondacks, Gloucester Mass, and Newport, RI, passing through Croydon New Hampshire of all places too which was glorified beyond recognition in [this](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/10/us/croydon-free-state-politics.html) *New York Times* article way back when. There was so much fun and joy and connection and an engagement (!!!!!) that it was pretty easy to look bright side, but of course there was all the usual trickiness of staying with friends and family like how to ride in the car together for hours on end, how to leave Salt Island in unattainably acceptable condition, how to respectfully shtup in a creaky house, etc… All of the difficult is superimposed on the splendid, even when things are overwhelmingly difficult or overwhelmingly splendid - the choice is ours how we focus one way or the other but let’s not pretend that it’s a complete story however it is that we choose. 3. THE WEDDING: Omg, it was fabulous. Just a peep or two at the [pictures](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Bm4HIuo2e2AZ43ozLQ_g-3P_fPdmBWG_?usp=drive_link) will confirm the grandeur - well-kept grounds, by the water-side, a big ass house of dubious origins, and an unspeakable amount of abandoned beef tenderloin. Lionel’s vows were strong AF to the point where people started spontaneously clapping and the photographers staged enough photos to make you cringe and wonder if they were documenting the wedding or someone was paying for an extra photoshoot on top of the actual festivities!! There were so many people I loved and too many people to actually connect with at all on a meaningful level. There were two perfectly good cufflinks and then there was just one after I couldn’t find the other in the trash!! It all could have felt like losing a brother or winning a sister and I’m choosing to see the ladder along with the great time that was had that I’m convinced will be followed by many many more to come. Life is attitude so it all becomes whatever you project onto it. As I keep going I keep going further and further into my attitude and others drift away as they go further and further into theirs. Mark Manson put it well, from a future email that somehow I read the day before it came out - “pain is inevitable but suffering is a choice.” I can’t help feeling a fool for going full bright side sometimes but it seems even more foolish to swim and baste and rot and die in a pool of pessimism; unless it’s fueling some hero’s effort to overhaul the injustice, I've found going golden the last little while to serve me - if you have nothing nice to dwell on then don’t dwell on anything at all. Ira