Doors closing?

Wojtek is devastated. My roomate's plan for the next year just got cut out from underneath him at the very last minute. The funding got cut from Poland and so his program got cut as well. Bummer. As soon as he told me the bad news, I started wracking my brain for ideas and options for him to research and made the mistake of blurting out all this optimism. The response I got was along the lines of "if you say anymore, I will shove your optimism back down your throat." I need to start thinking before I speak...that probably wasn't the right time to try and problem solve. Wojtek put up this wall between us, dividing us in two, with me being the optimistic-everything-in-life-is-sweet-and-easy and him being the hard-working-fight-for-everything-he's-got-things-don't-work-out-in-Eastern-Europe-like-in-America. But is it really this way? I like to think that if you keep your head up and your mind open, things WILL infact work out, maybe not exactly the way you planned or hoped for, but nonetheless, they will work out. This is what I have experienced in my life. But has being an American taught me this perspective? He disagrees, preferring to believe that life is hard and if things don't work out then you should blame the system because it is usually at fault and shalacked in corruption. Maybe in some cases, it is the "system's" fault, the transitioning country's error, but does that then mean that optimism should go out the window? Do different cultures have differing levels of optimism? This may seem really obvious, you could easily say yes, especially in the cases of the former Soviet bloc countries optimism doesn't exactly stand front and center, but does that lack of optimism mirror what the true present situation is? I wonder what I would be like if I had lived my whole life in Wojtek's situation. I like to think I wouldn't be as affected as he is, but I am not so sure. Maybe my optimism has been taught to me. I want him to be able to see the options available, the possibilites to take advantage of, but his eyes are locked in tunnel vision right now and he is angry. I wish I could help, but I can't because I cannot step into his shoes. I just refuse to think that his options are so muted and want him to feel the same. We are friends divided.