Be careful what you wish for...
I’ve been wearing my Cloak of Positivity a lot recently. Anyone else got one? Maybe you have but you don’t even know it.
It’s like Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility but it’s rubbish for hiding from teachers in corridors at night.
When I put on my cloak, everyone I meet (count ‘em - occasional cashier, passing dog walker, postman…erm, that’s it) can see that I am doing just fine thank you very much.
“Things could be so much worse,” I say from inside its glowing, velvety exterior when asked how I am.
“I’m just counting my blessings, you know.”
“Aw, we can’t complain, we’re all healthy.”
Now, I’ve a tail to tell. In the early Noughties my friend bought me one of those terracotta pocket money jars, the kind you’re supposed to smash open once you’ve rammed it full of your hard-earned cash.
It came with a tiny slip of paper inviting you to write out a wish that you then posted in the jar along with your first pennies.
I wrote in proper tidy handwriting: “To be always content.”
I was suitably content with this wish. How humble a wish! I didn’t ask to win the lottery, or to be famous, or to live happily ever after, or anything too, you know, “asky”. Just to be content. No more, no less.
It was only when I came to do some soul searching a few years back that I recalled this slip and began to see my wish in a very different light.
I still have the jar because I liked the look of it and didn’t want to smash it so, every time I want to retrieve some pocket money, I have to go through a right palaver involving a long knife and/or a pair of tweezers to try and coax out the coins and notes through the slot.
Anyway, tweezers in hand, I plucked out my old wish.
I looked at it and thought: how unrealistic was that? Was I so naïve? Because it’s impossible to be always content. Everyone experiences discontent at some point in their lives (seemingly at some point in every day at the moment!)
I have since come across a piece of wisdom in this quote, which replays itself in my mind more than any other:
“Life is a process of becoming. A combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” ~Anais Nin
When I first read it, it immediately took me back to that wish. I had elected to live in a state of constant contentment. Mate, never gonna happen.
But, in my defence, I’ve also come to see my wish in a slightly different way and it’s perhaps how I originally intended it. I guess I just wanted the grace to be content with what I had and not waste my life wishing for what I had not. Which makes it seem a reasonable and more attainable wish.
I’ve become more aware than ever during this latest lockdown of my compulsion to try to be positive, especially when I’m feeling crap. Now admittedly, my genes are blessed with positivity, for which I am ever grateful because it has seen me through many a bitter blow.
I also practice positive visualisation; great if I am feeling nervous about something or if I have noticed a self-sabotaging thought pattern that’s preventing me from moving forward.
I’m trying to say I am most definitely cool with positivity.
But I’ve also been aware of what psychologists now term ‘forced positivity.’ I’ve noticed myself doing a lot of it during lockdown (especially when attempting that impossible juggling act of working from home and home-schooling).
My Cloak of Positivity is the epitome of forced positivity. It contains an arsenal of ‘on the bright side’ answers I can reach for on auto-pilot when anyone asks how I am.
All of my stock answers are true. And I truly mean them when I say them, at least to some extent.
But to say only these things – “I’m fine, at least I have my health, things could be worse”, is also to deny what’s going on in my life and in my head; to belittle my real, valid experience of life right now.
It’s all a bit ‘I wish to be always content.’
Convention – or perhaps my forced positivity affliction – seems to dictate that unless I am dying, grieving, or can no longer put food on the table, then I should just lump it and put a classic British brave face on.
So I’m obliged to say I’m fine because there really are many, many people suffering an awful lot more than poor little me. But there are some parts of some days, quite regularly, when I experience major ‘discontent’, although I’d generally refer to it in much swearier terms.
My Cloak of Positivity may be made from a gorgeous, shiny, happy fabric, but underneath it is the unpolished, bare bones me, still having the same shitty experience and the same emotional response, but hiding it. And that’s a hiding to nothing!
So, I am working on allowing myself to remove this cloak more often. I’m gonna keep it on the hook, for sure, it is most definitely useful on occasion and I’m all for ‘fake it till you make it’ when needs must.
But more often I’m gonna whip it right off (I promise not to be naked) and try to be at peace with what lies beneath, maybe even have a proper wallow. For a socially acceptable amount of time. And probably not in front of the postman.
I’ll leave you with this poem by Rumi, which reminds me to accept whatever I am feeling in the moment, which is bloody hard but well worth practising.
It has also inspired me to revise my wish: “To be content, even in my discontent.” (Hey, check me, I’m still humble! *Insert halo!*).
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honourably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
