Cruelties of Positive Thinking

by Lucy S.

I might be changing how I write a lot of these posts.  I started off putting some of the essays I'd already written on here, and then writing posts that I would work on - not nearly with as much careful crafting as my essays, but still, in a very different way than I write emails (more on my email writing later).  But I am starting to question the 'voice' in the blog posts and a larger ideology that comes through - this sense that I am preaching and prescribing, maybe, or conversely, a deep insecurity that I undoubtedly grapple with but which isn't as global as it may come across in my writing.  The ideology is part of a larger ideology that I feel is becoming so pervasive in our society -- the inability to 'hang out' for long periods of time just talking, letting the conversation meander all over the place, falling into comfortable silences at times while each person just  rests and thinks without pressure, talking about ideas and stories that matter, but not as definitive means to an end.  So I'm going to start writing in here for a while - at least to try it - in more of a 'hang out' mode, writing to see where it takes me. 

I also am working on some formal writing projects, so I need this to be an easier writing experience.

Today I had reason to think about why the call for people to "be positive" pisses me off so much sometimes. One of my extended family members, Nicole, messaged me to say she's feeling overwhelmed, that she misses her kids, that she can't help thinking at times that if only her ex wouldn't have started on meth a few years after they got together and become abusive and untrustworthy, everything could have been so much easier now. She said she tries to stay positive, but it's hard. And she does try to stay positive. I see her messages almost everyday on FB about what a beautiful day it is, how she is blessed, how thankful she is, and so on.  Child protection services took her kids when she and her ex split up. I don't know every reason for this, but she says that it's in part because she let him be around the kids when he wasn't supposed to be allowed around them because of his meth addiction.  They also lost their apartment when they split up. The kids are in foster care; she sleeps on her cousin's couch; and she has visitation with them.  She is working at in the bakery section of a major grocery store in California making $10 per hour, as many hours as they'll give her.  Getting her kids back depends on getting a place, the judge says, but it's hard to understand how she can ever afford an apartment on this wage.  How is thinking positively supposed to resolve these economic issues?

I got to talking to Justin, my oldest son, about the difference between Nicole's grandmother's situation of 35 years ago and her own.  My aunt Marian left her spouse in the later 1970s because he had been physically violent toward her for years and she couldn't take it anymore.  Marian had a good union job in Torrance back that paid very well - a shipping facility. By the 1980s, Marian made $20 per hour - and she was not at all wealthy on that. She was raising three kids; renting a two bedroom apartment in another part of the greater L.A. metro area - Rowland Heights; didn't get child support from her ex-husband; drove a used car for her long commute; they had almost all dinners at home - basic foods, nothing gourmet.  (I know; they were one of the many places I lived for varying lengths of time in my teens after I left Lancaster.)   I was talking to Justin about the basic differences in their lives being so determined by these material realities. If Marian had been forced to work for the 1970s to 1980s equivalent of today's $10 per hour, she could not have rented the apartment for her and her kids or lived with the autonomy she managed. Would she have even left her chronically abusive husband?  If so, would she have been forced to live with my grandparents for years?  If a judge had taken her kids away and made getting her own place a condition for getting them back, could she have managed it?

There is a profound cruelty in expecting Nicole to "think positive!!"  Inside the relentless demand for that shiny peppiness is an idealist ideology that pretends that it is Nicole's attitude which determines her success or failure in this system, rather than these material realities which are far larger than her.  And the individualizing of this "positive thinking" becomes a buffer between us and the healthy anger we need to realize that we are cornered by this system and that we can only solve these things in any broad way by uniting with others to demand higher pay and better conditions of work and life - or going even further, dramatically changing out society.  Meanwhile, the situation Nicole is in IS overwhelming.  Monumental effort is needed just to get her kids back - not only effort, but luck.  From my perspective, it seems almost impossible.  I've taken up a collection in our extended family to pitch in some to help her get into an apartment, but even if this helps, how will she keep up with the costs of living month in, month out, on those wages?  If she succumbs to depression under these conditions, is she to be chastised for her "negative attitude" and for "complaining"?

The point isn't some kind of condescending pity for Nicole here, but to say it's time to stop this "positive thinking" and call this bullshit out for what it is.  The way out of the cycles of hyper-positivity and sobbing depression is, I think, sustained anger at the system putting us in these situations and the people who prop it up by pretending that it's normal and beneficial, and that we are the dysfunctional ones.

I don't need to turn Nicole or anyone else into a saintly lamb in order to say this.  I am not saying that we don't need to protect kids sometimes from dangerous living conditions with their parents, either. But the material realities of her life smash her down and keep her kids separated from a mother who loves them and is not herself a danger to them.

Granted, I can't just tell Nicole that she'd might as well give up and go roll herself into the ocean. There are no good surrender terms in this society, so we're forced to keep trying under even brutal conditions. So we get cornered - economically blackmailed - into having to pump ourselves up enough to look for jobs, market ourselves as a product (as depressing and degrading as this often feels), go to work, and try to maneuver in the system enough to survive and grab what freedom and happiness we can.  But we sure as hell don't have to think positively about this bitter reality.

I know the problems with positive thinking because I find myself in the same patterns of depression and optimism at times. These emerge from certain barriers to autonomy and equality.  I wrote to a friend about some of this today, about how my writing is too often "framed in a position of weakness."

 It's about how I'm "getting better" or "struggling" or "feel confused" or "need help."  .... It's like trying to crawl out of slickly sided container, throwing yourself at it in bursts of optimism and then sliding back down into insecurity.  

Make that sliding down into pain, fear, desperation for affirmation, corrosive insecurity at times.  At the same time, there is always far more than these binaries.  As soon as I sit and talk with someone for any length of time - really talk, laugh, relax - these falsities crumble and I am back again in the full world, where I don't need extra special help.

I also wrote:

Sometimes I try to figure out the best way to understand my own situation and self.  If I go with a Marxist understanding, the material realities are that I can't support myself in this economy, that I have years of college education, both in the past and in finishing the BA and now the Master's, and still can't.  I don't want my education to just be for that purpose. But I want work, and I want the autonomy that I think an adult in this society should have (and that some do). My position in academia feels so precarious, just hanging by the one thread right now of the one class I will teach.... I'm thrilled about doing it, but I am afraid, too. 

Acknowledging this doesn't solve my problems, but it is far more genuinely healthy than the artificial highs of "positive thinking."  More on this again next time.