Is Buddha a Pessimist?!

For various reasons, which I won't go into at the moment, early this morning I typed into Google Search the search term:

Is Buddha...

And these possibilities appeared...

... a God
... Real
... in Hell
... a Real Person

What I really wanted to know... "Is Buddha a pessimist"

There is some debate on the issue. Maybe not so surprising. Buddha famously said (accurately, or inaccurately?) "Life is suffering." So in that sense, you would say yes, Buddha was pessimistic, but some argue that he offers us a way out of this suffering, which is to drop our craving for the things of this world. Drop the craving, and you can't be dissatisfied with the things of this world, and presto chango you are COOL! Which would be optimistic.

So in that way, Buddha would be pessimistic and optimistic at the same time. So they kind of cancel each other out. The bet is hedged so to speak.  Buddha has it covered it! How typical of wisdom!