I have been feeling moved to write a post about this for about a week now, and thankfully a few friends have also been feeling that way and have eloquently put some of my thoughts into words. Thank you Lauren, for your wisdom here: Getting on my soapbox for a minute: Ive noticed a growing trend over the past few years - a cultural obsession with positivity and happiness. Dont get me wrong, positivity and happiness are wonderful...but when it becomes an obsession I believe its damaging. Everywhere we look nowadays were bombarded with the same message: Be happy! Think positive! Smile! I think this constant in-your-face message simply serves to cheapen the true emotion of happiness while undermining the very valuable lessons that can be learned from grief, sadness, anger, loss, anxiety, despair and discontent. Let me tell you something: No one is supposed to be happy all the time. And if you attempt to be in order to keep up with the worlds latest and greatest Be Happy! catchphrase, youre sure to be miserable. Its an impossible, unattainable goal this being happy and positive all the time thing. You can try...but I believe youll do so at the expense of your soul...by burying other legitimate emotions that should be acknowledged and dealt with. Ive noticed several of my friends this week, friends who are going through extremely difficult times, discuss their feelings of loss, anger, anxiety and profound sadness and then immediately turn around and apologize for speaking the words of their heart. Sorry for sounding so negative! Thanks for listening to me whine and so on and so forth. One of these friends is dealing with a devastating illness at a young age, another lost her father, and yet another finds herself homeless and living in her car. These people are suffering...so why do they feel compelled to apologize for being honest with their feelings? Because we live in a world that shuns any and every human emotion other than happiness. We dont know how to deal with it. It makes us uncomfortable. And thats awfully unfortunate. Because suffering and so-called negative emotions can serve as powerful teachers and sometimes even gifts if we allow them to. They make us human. Relatable. Real. I dont know about you but I cant relate to those happy and positive all the time! people. (Besides the fact that I dont believe them). Im happy and positive a lot of the time. But all of the time? No. I struggle. I struggle with anger, sadness, grief, despair, jealousy, ego...the list is long. And if youre honest with yourself, you do too. And you know what?? Thats okay. Its okay, really. Dont buy into the lie that something is wrong with you if youre not *always* happy or you just cant muster up enough feel-good juice to think positive today. Theres nothing wrong with you - theres something wrong with the message.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 17:40:35 +0000
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