The Negative of Positive

Want to hear the most trite, terrible advice ever offered: "Stay Positive."

A broken leg: Stay Positive
A broken marriage: Stay Positive
Death of a family member: Stay Positive
Death of a pet: Stay Positive

This phrase has become a conversational place holder where emotions should go. But they can't go there, because we don't allow ourselves to feel our emotions because we're so focused on "Staying Positive." Our focus on positive thinking has become a socially acceptable form of denial, on par with shopping too much or being frosty, posh and British. How does something that on first look is awesome, like positivity (or being frosty and British), go so horribly wrong?

According to the Mayo Clinic website, positive thinking can help you live longer, reduce instances of cardiovascular disease and even give you greater resistance to colds. All good things right? According to positive-thinking-self-help pop gurus positive thinking can get you a BMW.  That's way better than just staving off a cold. So which form of positivity do you think most people choose? The gentle, if materially unprofitable, form of positivity posited by the Mayo Clinic, or the intense, materially super profitable form shown by books like "The Secret." Spoiler alert: Capitalism takes the day.

In this intense positivity, everything that is seen as 'negative' or 'drama' is fast cut out, avoided and shunned. When faced with an event that is seen as negative but can't be avoided, then the muffling headphones of 'positivity' are used. The ugly event is still there, but an effort is made to muffle its noise and forget its presence. Gratitude journals are taken out, sights are taken in, yoga classes are scheduled, a rigorous monitoring of our thoughts is undertaken, all of this and still the damn unavoidable negative event lives in our thoughts.

We're hounded by sadness and listlessness. Unkind comments fly off our lips before we were even cognizant that those thoughts owned real estate in our heads. Everything is drab. We're surrounded by idiots. Life isn't fair.

This is good.

This is life.

Life isn't fair. We are surrounded by idiots. Life rarely appears in primary-colored saturations. If you deny this, if you try to convince yourself that this is 'drama' or 'negativity' then you aren't really living life. You have brainwashed yourself right out of being human. You drank the kool aid, friend.

What I think of as a healthy positivity isn't avoidance or dismissal. It's acceptance that yeah, life is straight up shitty a lot of the time. Cars break down, rent checks bounce, the Democrats/Republicans have a real chance of taking the White House/Congress this year, or next year or whenever. If you can deal with the shitty truth of that without trying to spin it in a more palatable way and still think the world is pretty rad, dogs are awesome, bees are cool or your mom has a great laugh, then I think you have achieved real positive thinking.

On that note, you're all idiots and I love you.

New Adventures in Audiobooks

Audiobooks have become my new favorite thing in the past two months. Previous to this, my only experience of audiobooks was with my father in our 20-hour drive from Atlanta to Boston. My dad is a spy book fanatic. His desk is cluttered with library books by Vince Flynn, Robert Ludlum and Daniel Silva. Books with titles like, "The Icpress Files," "The Osterman Weekend" and "Transfer of Power." (Fun Activity: Read those book titles aloud in the most menacing voice you can muster. Fun, right?)

So before our drive, my father just sort of leisurely suggested that we should get the new Jack Jackson* audiobook entitled something like, "The Stalingrad Communiqué," you know, just to make the time go by faster. Lemme tell ya, that was one of the longest twenty hours of my life. All of these spy audiobooks (and for all I knew, all audiobooks) are narrated by gruff-voiced guys. When he had to voice the few women who showed up in the books, the narrator sounded so overly feminine that the thought crossed my mind that he was mocking the character...or that she was learning disabled or something. When the narrator hit the sex scene though, I thought my father was going to die of embarrassment. Suddenly dad was talking really loudly about how nice a Waffle House sign looked, and how, "These roads Meggie, these roads."

That was my experience with audiobooks. The ghost of Jack Palance narrating badly written sex scenes while my father yelled about infrastructure.

I rediscovered audiobooks, or discovered them in the proper form, by trying to show my support for a podcast I love called "Philosophize This," here's a link to it. It's a philosophy podcast done by some poor, stressed out man who just wants to quit his job and podcast philosophy full time. One week he was sponsored by Audible and he asked, to show our support, that we sign up for audible and get a free book download.

I meant to quit after the first one. I swear I did.

But the first one was so good!

It was "Bring Up The Bodies" by Hillary Mantel. The narrator, who was a man, was neither grizzled-voiced or demeaning to listen to. And the book! The book itself was magic. I would listen on my phone while I was in the bath, dreading having to put my head under water to rinse out my shampoo for fear of missing some wisdom bomb or cleverly-put phrase. I was actually relieved I didn't have cable as t.v. would cut into my listening time.

I think the whole thing was about eighteen hours long. I would listen in the bath, while I was cooking, while I was cleaning, while I was driving to Atlanta. I actively looked for long stretches of time where I could be by myself and listen. Of course I do this with regular books, but I was surprised that I wanted to do this with an audiobook.

I was sad when it was over.

My friend, the narrator, was gone. It was like adding insult to injury as this wonderful book had ended but now my narrator friend was gone too.

So, I found a new friend. My new friend is "The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdie and it is off the chain good. My new friend and I hang out in all the same spots my old friend and I used to hang out, only it's different this time. My new friend tells me about India and Bollywood and suicidal mistresses. My old friend talked about England, King Henry and Anne Boleyn. Equally good things to talk about but unlike my old friend, whose secrets I know, I'm looking forward to my new friend's great reveal. What secrets do you have, new friend. Maybe we just need a little more time together until you can tell me.  

*I made this name up. Totally sounds like the name a spy novelists would have though