THE future is a bleak landscape. If my name was Rembrandt van Rijn -- uh-huh, it's no coincidence that the name is similar -- I might paint tomorrow as a vista of greys.

A turbulent sky presiding over people who have slaked their appetite on resources like water, timber, coal and blood.

It takes no skill to wield that brush.

When every front page is bad news and forecasts for climate change, the environment and even politics have an apocalyptic ring, the macabre becomes mundane.

Another US massacre. Another earthquake. Another road fatality.

What's hard is to splash colour around the canvas.

Best-selling author Rob Bell once said: "I have learned that what you look for, you will find.

"If you want to be a cynic, there is plenty to be cynical about, if you want to be a sceptic, there is plenty to be sceptical about, if you want to be pessimistic, there is plenty to be pessimistic about.

"What you look for, you will find."

The pessimist says, "That tree is blocking our view."

The optimist says, "What a beautiful tree."

It's a glass-half-empty, glass-half- full kind of thing.

What better example of optimism than the staying power of Stuart Diver in the Thredbo landslide of 1997.

It's such a good example that we're still talking about it today, more than a decade on.

Guaranteed - when Diver was buried beneath all that rubble, he wasn't muttering an "I'm gonna die" mantra.

Survival requires inner optimism.

Later, when he was coming to grips with the loss of his wife and friends, he was forced to choose again between pessimism and optimism.

"I had two choices in my life - paint all the windows black and stay inside or go out there and try to do something positive," he was quoted as saying in a newspaper article.

These days he plays an active part in promoting the work of the Salvation Army and giving life-affirming speeches.

What Diver looked for, he found.