SNL has a couple skits about these stupid signs.
When you hit rock bottom, there’s only one way to go: sideways!
I understood it to be that the goose (or I’ve also seen “someone”) right now walked over where your grave is going to be. There’s a Kipling story that uses this as foreshadowing, as two adulterous lovers plot their escape while watching some labourers dig a grave (Romantic!). One of them shivers when the gravedigger jumps over the hole, and ends up buried you’ll never guess where.
OK, that makes more sense than my interpretation.
Just as creepy, though 
Peeing over the fence is a time-honored tradition. And fertilizes the grass on 'tother side. leading to greener.
Just be sure that if it’s an electric fence you really do pee over, not on.
Optimism is a proactive action. It is not passive, it is something you make a conscious decision to do. A lot of people do it by hanging up positive statement to help influence how their day will turn out.
So why make an affirmative decision to be positive when there’s so much ugliness in this world? Because your results as an optimistic person will be immeasureably greater than someone who gives in to their pessissimistic nature. POW’s under the most inhumane and intolerable conditions are more likely to survive if they make a deliberate optimistic decision to live. Inventors and artists are more likely to create and thrive if they make a conscious decision to think positive.
Negative people have a difficult time just crawling out of bed or seeing any purpose in life at all.
I disagree. Optimism is not necessarily anything proactive.
Optimistic people are that way passively; their natural unconscious reaction to everything just happens that way for them.
For pessimistic people, optimism is an artificial act. Which may become an incorporated habit. Meaning something that is proactive, but unconsciously so.
I agree with your point that optimism is better for general health and especially for survival in adverse circumstances. No matter how hard one has to work at it.
IMO the sign-posting people are mostly trying and failing to fool themselves.
Optimism may very well be better for general health; being pessimistic all the time is stressful, and stress is hard on the body.
But better for survival in adverse circumstances? “I’m optimistic that that lion 20 yards away licking its chops is not going to try to eat me, so I don’t think I need to bother to take any defensive or evasive action”.
Also, pessimists are never unpleasantly surprised. So that’s something.
– lifelong recovering pessimist
I like it.
Or a sherpa struggling to earn a living doing a shitty difficult job for a pittance.
I saw one today, in small print, “Never give up on your stupid, stupid dreams.”
Threadwinner! Where can I order the poster?
Here:
They sell everything.
Saw the phrase, knew what to do,
Asked ChatGPT to make it true.
Mountains rose, climbers climbed high,
Almost perfect text caught my eye.
With “resting” climbers, dead but sly,
A trick to make AI comply.
Errors piled, text went astray,
But close enough—I’ll post anyway.
Paused to compose this verse, half-done,
When LSLGuy swooped in for fun.
He found a link, swift and sly—
Demotivational, ready to buy!
When people require inspiration, I place my hand on their shoulder and comfort them with:
In moments like this, never forget, the crow flies in square circles.
@Ponderoid: That’s awesome. Both the f-ed up pix and your fine poetry.
Shame the AI didn’t leave a couple of bodies lying along side the columns marching heedlessly towards their chosen peak.
Did the second pic not load for you, with “resting” climbers in full view?
Footprints are better than skid marks. Just ask the the Go-Go’s.
It’s awkwardly phrased but true. True friends share both their suffering and their joy. If you friend’s pain has not left an impression on your heart then you must have an extremely lucky friend.
I know that as, “You can’t drink all day unless you start in the morning.”
It’s a Demotivator from Despair, Inc.; they have a whole website of demotivational sayings