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02 February, 2006 - 9:22 a.m.
on positivity

"I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it, was as before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it."
-Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

I had in my head a few minutes ago a vision of Dante from the movie Clerks. To those who are unfamiliar, for shame! Rent this movie immediately. I know it's poorly filmed and has some mundane moments, but it's a good cultural point of reference. I can tell you exactly where I was and who I was with the first time I watched it. It was new years eve and it was going to be 1997 soon. The cast of my latest play (I did every play in high school except for Snoopy; This time, it was two one-acts: "this is a test" and "carwash") and I were at my co-star J's house. His parents were away and they had a party. We decided to watch this Clerks movie, and I promptly fell aleep. I woke up to the sound of someone vomiting and drove myself home. I watched it again sometime later and loved it.

So anyway, I was thinking about Dante and his self-fulfilling prophecies and his self-defeating behavior. Of course he goes nowhere in life because he makes no effort to do so. Instead, he just complains about how life sucks and it's going nowhere. We all know people like that, don't we? People who complain because of what their doctor has said, but do nothing to better their health. People who complain because of a fight with someone they love, but make no move to repair the situation. People who have no jobs and sit around all day watching television instead of submitting resumes, but complain about unemployment. {I'm sort of that last one, except that I do submit resumes... online.} It's almost as if these people are afraid to make an effort for fear that they'll fail.

Anyway. I was thinking about the Dantes in life and about the psychology of self-talk (look it up.) and how people who are in dire health situations and have a positive outlook heal faster and have better health than those who are pessimistic. I was thinking that it wasn't buddhism or yoga or being bestowed with blessings that brought about my change from a pessimist to thinking with positivity. It was science. It was all those research articles about healing and job outcomes and relationships etc etc etc ad nauseum that made me realize how important it was to monitor my thinking and to change it.

My outlook shift has had wide-reaching effects in my life. I have more friends than I did. I stopped drinking to cope with my life (which was awesome, as I was an RA at the time that I did that). I'm mostly managed to quit smoking. I am healthier. I have better relationships with the people in my life (except my mother, who feeds off of people's emotions and hates that I'm happy, I think). I stopped living in fear of failure and just take it in stride that I can't WIN everything and that it's ok for me to be less than perfect at things.

I wish that I could take what I've learned and hand it to the people in my life who fail to see this way. The people who sit on their hands and bitch because they can't do anything. Unfortunately, "education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught" (Oscar Wilde). I can't teach you how to be positive any more than you can teach me faith.

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