I entered the musty office for the weekly staff meeting on Monday. I only stop in the office for this meeting once a week. As I enter, I greet everyone I see with a smile and some convivial joke about work ethic.
“Victoria, who’s ready to crush this meeting?!” I say to lukewarm reception.
“Why are you like this?” asks another of my co-workers. “You’re so positive, what are you running from?” she asks.
~~~
I get this a-lot. I hyphenated “a lot” on purpose.
From an early age, my dad would drop me off at school and remind me to smile at everyone. From my friends to my teachers to the custodians and lunch staff to even the ne'er-do-wells that I didn’t get along with.
This was an early lesson in, people enjoy dealing with people who seem like they’re in a good mood. If we explore the purpose of living a human existence, at some point you confront suffering. As we age, and as we are indoctrinated into this society, so many of us succumb to the suffering and come to almost celebrate this disconnection with happiness. As our childlike wonder and other positive attributes are slowly pruned from the trees of our lives, it becomes exceedingly more difficult to maintain positivity.
At the same time, I feel like as we age we’re exposed to exponentially greater and greater generosity, joy and love. The tragedies of a miscarriage may not be entirely swept away by love and support, but as our tear ducts are drained from the pain, we’re left with overwhelming feelings of awe towards our family and friends who showed up in the aftermath.
In today’s culture, there’s an abundance of “dark humor” which can be seen as an indication of our collective processing of this trauma that we carry. Negativity has become funny. Skepticism is cool. Flippant judgements demeaning someone’s optimism pollute contemporary stand-up comedy routines and sit-coms.
Optimism can be judged as naivety. As though someone’s positivity means they know less than someone else. Do positive people know less? Is optimism a sign of delusion? Is negativity a symptom of enlightenment?
Positivity isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes a-lot of will-power to maintain in the presence of other adults. Not everyone has the patience to deal with high-energy folks, before their coffee or otherwise. The tendency for these to engage in boiling crab behavior can be apparently strong enough to indulge in with impunity.
~~~
Pessimism is so easy for adults to fall into. We’re more aware of worldly atrocities and systematic oppression too big to even fully comprehend, how could we not be pissy about it? But it is this cycle that I’m trying to beat. Because there is so much suffering, we need to make a more conscious effort to maintain a positive attitude. And just because it's hard because of our wealth of knowledge of the torrential factors that oppress our freedom doesn’t mean that we should surrender the freedom we have left. Our attitude is all we have left to control.
If our attitude is one of the last things we have complete control over, wouldn’t you rather choose to use it to have a better day, and maybe inspire someone else to have a better day too?
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