On the nature of happiness, misery, and peace.

Do you have any insight as to how the ego/attachments play with optimism and pessimism? I have often worried that feeding one feeds the other and that a person could only make themselves miserable by trying to see positive in all events. When I see an optimist I feel they enjoy life more but when something hard enough comes along to break through it, they're beyond devastated. And as someone who had been lost in pessimism for many years, I handled tragedy and loss well but dulled myself from feeling any joy at all. They both seem like kinds of distortions to me, and I am curious to know if anyone has managed to balance the two(if they can be balanced, or if they're the same thing) as opposed to attempting to deny them entirely. I would still prefer to limit them as much as I can, but i believe that that will require the same type of control that a person would have to have to manage them.

I do not see peace as the balancing of happiness and misery, but the absence of both. . . . I believe that happiness and misery are tied so tightly together that they can be seen as one entity;

The ego, in this context, is the lens through which we view the objective world. It is the culmination of all that we have experienced, everything that we consider Me. This includes your opinions, fears, joys, desires, biases, purpose, passion, and even what is right or wrong.

As a result of our attachment we see this as bad, it hurts, and we either give into that or desperately seek to find some optimistic way of viewing it.

Hobbes:
But whatsoever is the object of any mans Appetite or Desire; that is it, which he for his part calleth Good: And the object of his Hate, and Aversion, evill; And of his contempt, Vile, and Inconsiderable. For these words of Good, evill, and Contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: There being nothing simply and absolutely so.
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The names of such things as affect us, that is, which please, and displease us, because all men be not alike affected with the same thing, nor the same man at all times, are in the common discourses of men, of Inconstant signification. For seeing all names are imposed to signifie our conceptions; and all our affections are but conceptions; when we conceive the same things differently, we can hardly avoyd different naming of them. For though the nature of that we conceive, be the same; yet the diversity of our reception of it, in respect of different constitutions of body, and prejudices of opinion, gives everything a tincture of our different passions. And therefore in reasoning, a man bust take heed of words; which besides the signification of what we imagine of their nature, disposition, and interest of the speaker; such as are the names of Vertues, and Vices; For one man calleth Wisdome, what another calleth Feare; and one Cruelty, what another Justice; one Prodigality, what another Magnanimity; one Gravity, what another Stupidity, &c. And therefore such names can never be true grounds of any ratiocination. No more can Metaphors, and Tropes of speech: but these are less dangerous, because they profess their inconstancy; which the other do not.

I have decided to try and rid myself of my ego entirely, in hopes that I can see the world with true objectivity and experience peace.The cost for this is giving up all that I am and any notions of happiness in my future, though I am quite content with the decision. Initially I worried that this would mean losing everything that made me human, but I'm beginning to see that even what it is to be human is a construct of my ego. I simply want to be and learn, no more and no less.

After much contemplation I have discovered, what I believe to be, a fundamental truth of the human experience. You cannot have true Peace or objectivity so long as Happiness and Misery exist in your life. I do not see peace as the balancing of happiness and misery, but the absence of both. I see peace and objectivity as one because for me to believe that I know something, but not objectively, causes great dissonance.

if you find something that I have overlooked or that you would like to add/challenge, let me know.

Hobbes:
Continual Successe in obtaining those things which a man from time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call FELICITY; I mean the Felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual Tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because Life itself is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Feare, no more than without Sense.
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No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute knowledge of Fact, past, or to come. For, as for the knowledge of Fact, it is originally, Sense; and ever after, Memory. And for the knowledge of consequence, which I have said before is called Science, it is not Absolute, but Conditionall. No man can know by Discourse, that this, or that, is, has been, or will be; which is to know absolutely: but onely, that if This be, That is; if This has been, That has been; if This shall be, That shall be: which is to know conditionally; and that not the consequence of one thing to another; but of one name of a thing, to another name of the same thing.
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Anxiety for the future time, disposeth men to enquire into the causes of things: because the knowledge of them, maketh men the better able to order the present to their best advantage.

Hobbes:
For being assured that there be causes of all things that have arrived hitherto, or shall arrive hereafter; it is impossible for a man, who continually endeavoureth to secure himselfe against the evill he feares, and procure the good he desireth, not to be in a perpetuall solicitude of the time to come; So that every man, especially those that are over provident, are in an estate like to that of Prometheus. For as Prometheus, (which interpreted, is, The Prudent Man,) was bound to the hill Caucasus, a place of large prospect, where, an Eagle feeding on his liver, devoured in the day, as much as was repayred in the night: So that man, which looks too far before him, in the care of future time, hath his heart all the day long, gnawed on by feare of death, poverty, or other calamity; and has no repose, nor pause of his anxiety, but in sleep.

for me to believe that I know something but not objectively causes great dissonance.