Upbeat or downbeat?

I looked over my list of emotions, trying to pick one to write about, and I noticed that there are an excessive number of negative emotions in the lot. I count about 12 positive ones (out of 45 or so), and the rest are pretty grim. So I am re-thinking my strategy of expanding on one of each of these - that could make for some very sad postings. My default personality trait is optimism. I think the emotion from the list that plays strongest in an optimist's day is hope. But, is that really an emotion? I guess so. What makes it so? You should be able to read an emotion on someone's face.

I'm thinking about a little chart that I saw once that had little cartoon drawings of faces, each one expressing an emotion. These faces were supposedly the "universal depiction" of feelings, kind of like the international pictographs for decyphering the psyche. I can imagine what the picture of "hope" looked like... big eyes, looking upward, goofy smile...




On the other hand, if one is truely an optimist, are they really hopeful, or just confident that in the end, everything will work out for the best. I don't see confidence on the emotion list.. but I can see the little face in my mind's eye. Steadfast, straight-ahead look, upright body posture (whoops, there's no body on my cartoon), strong grin.