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Positivity: Maybe let’s Just say No to saying Yes
Positivity isn’t positive. That’s the trick.
Positivity isn’t the same thing as having a good attitude. A forward-thinking determination to get through obstacles, to look on the sunny side of life.
Positivity is something else: it’s got a shadow side, and that shadow side is about pushing away negative things, even when they’re true, and real.
The Buddha wasn’t into positivity.
From birth, as a spoiled prince, he was surrounded by goodness. Good food, health care, sex, riches. But then he discovered an elderly person, outside the palace walls. He witnessed a dying person. He saw a sick person. He realized there were hard things, and bad news.
He didn’t go back home and turn the lock. He embraced the negative. If this is true, he said, I want to know all about it. I want to learn, and grow, and care, and open my heart to truth.
Positivity, if it’s about “good vibes only,” ignoring suffering, ignoring bad news, ignoring things that stress us out…isn’t a positive thing. It’s not even healthy. Stress isn’t bad for us. Avoiding stress is bad for us. Failing to process stress is bad for us. So we have to learn how to get through it, not how to avoid it. We have to remember to eat well, to exercise, to meditate, to practice joyful, tender compassion. That’s truly positive.
F*ck Positivity:
Let this little rant be a clarion call to all those who still have their feet on the ground and brains in their head: let us stand no more for that Cult of Positivity: let us shake our Body-Snatched Brethren by their shoulders, encourage them to relax, grin, and—ironically—lighten up.
Everyone I know who’s reallly into positivity is kind of rigid, or uptight: and when they see anything that’s not positive they avoid it, or hate on it, which is…sad. Should we ignore suffering? No. Awareness is the beginning of waking up.
The bad, sad, tragic news of 9/11, if we remember, inspired countless positive life-changes in America. It also inspired further aggression and heartbreak, from those who couldn’t sit with the loss and pain and find a way to truly heal our world in a way that makes all children safer.
Still, remember: there’s nothing cooler about being reflexively nihilistic, cynical, or negative, than being positive.
There’s nothing cool about not caring—either way. It’s when we can care for both light and dark, and let go of both, that we can begin to truly celebrate our daily life.
Positivity, like nihilism or cynicism, is a cancer on the Western psyche. Too dramatic? Well then it’s a big fat postule.
We all want happiness.
But the way we mount that summit isn’t through thinking happy thoughts or manifesting or suppressing or even attracting. It’s not through looksmaxxing or auramaxxing or wishful thinking.
It’s through relaxing with things as they are, breathing deep into that, being brave enough to feel hard things, and celebrating whatever we’re experiencing—unconditionally.
None of this is easy. But it’s easier to be honest with ourselves, ultimately, than to lie to ourselves and others and our world.
So how did fear of fear—that unsaid, unacknowledged “shadow” of positivity—gain its foothold in the American psyche?
Through positivity.
Positivity is no longer just a New Agey spiritualist‘s little Secret. It’s no longer a mere mental trick, or naive obsession. It’s gone mainstream through yoga classes and greeting cards and half-baked faux-Rumi quotes on Pinterest, or Threads, or whatever.
Aging hipsters—that last bastion of Couldn’t Care Less, only recently so bohemianly sarcastic, witty, dry n’droll, now post happy thoughts to Facebook, or IG, or whatever.
So what’s the problem with positivity?
1. It doesn’t work. Fear is conquered through friendship, not aggression; through breathing in and out, not pushing away and closing down, mumbling desperate Hallmark slogans at ourselves. Fearlessness is attained by going through fear, not avoiding it. As Winston Churchill said, if you find yourself in hell, keep going.
2. It’s uptight: it’s a smiley face version of the longtime British notion of “stiff upper lip.” You know: thoughts of sadness, anger, confusion? Suppress them. But: the way to happiness and joy is through
1) openness,
2) a willingness to give voice and conversation to all thoughts (including respectful criticism, problems, fears, concerns, confusion) and
3) a sense of humor.
Positivity lacks in all three. Case in point: a longtime dear friend who’s recently joined the Cult of Positivity yelllllling at me (literally, I laughed at the hypocrisy) about how I needed to be more positive at a recent dinner.
3. It’s shallow. There’s no need for positivity: we at our most fundamental are basically good beings. Our human nature is awake, or “Buddha.” We don’t have to paint or band-aid ourselves with happiness—we are fundamentally happy. Any confusion or darkness is, as Woody Allen or Byron could tell you, the source not only of creativity but laughter. Here’s a (Buddhist) analogy: our confusion, sadness, even depression is like the clouds in the sky. The sky is your fundamental nature. Stop being shallow: actually work with your mind, and you’ll see reality glow with direct perception.
And when we’re present, everything’s more fun, real, alive, easy. It’s when we aren’t present, we aren’t in gear, that the ordinary magic that is this precious daily life fades.
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Happiness is a sympathetic, understandable goal: Fear through Fearlessness, by Pema Chodron.
For a manifesto that doesn’t make me gag, read this next:
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