Get Real: Count Your Blessings and Your Troubles

My friend Priscilla (who runs the very successful The Faith Club Group on Beliefnet's Community) and I were just e-mailing each other the other day about the pressure we feel to be happy all of the time. I mean, in this society, you need to plaster a grin on your face or else you get construction workers making smart remarks like "Lady, Would it kill you to smile?"

I've always been a realist, as opposed to an optimist. And I guess some folks worry that my perspective on life might be contagious ... that if I'm not counting ONLY my blessings--as opposed to counting EVERYTHING, blessings and curses--that I'm drowning myself and all those around me in a toxic negativity.

I, however, feel that I'm just being real. Why is it so bad to be real?

I've visited this topic on Beyond Blue before, of course, on my posts "Enough with the Gratitude!" "Complaint-Free? Not!" (I like that one), "I like Whine," "Whining Welcome on Beyond Blue," and Beyond Blue reader Margaret's masterpiece, "Spare Me the Platitudes."

But it is a topic worth revisiting because Group Beyond Blue member Luthitarian started a fascinating discussion thread called "Counting Not Just the Blessings" at Group Beyond Blue at Beliefnet's Community. Here is what he writes:

For some time, I have been waiting to get my hands on Jane Pauley's book, "Skywriting," ever since the PBS program on depression, where I learned of her bipolar illness. A statement she made in the preface really struck me: "'Just look on the bright side' strikes me as an essentially pessimistic point of view. I can't deny the research that says optimists live longer, but I think they lack the faith to take life whole and it comes no other way. I like to think that 'Skywriting' is about looking toward the bright side, knowing the journey there will not always be a straight line but rather a spiraling path that moves forward in a pattern of turning back--purposeful wandering. Here's where the realist in me is revealed for an optimist, because I believe in my future enough to risk finding that my idea of my past has been something of a fantasy."

Wow!! That struck me as a really powerful statement. I'm sorry, but to me the optimist who wants to look only on the bright side is a bit of a Pollyanna. On my way to the library to pick up this and other books on reserve today, I passed a church with the message board that read: "Count your blessings and not your troubles." The response came immediately to mind, "Thanks, but I'll keep careful tabs on BOTH if you don't mind!" I don't want to dwell on the negative, but I don't want to pretend there is only the positive.

Well, maybe pretend is too strong a word. Let's say instead I don't want to live as if only the positive mattered. That's why I have always chosen to consider myself a realist. Maybe that's also why I have trouble buying into affirmations and "positive thinking."

I was so refreshed to read that, because sometimes I feel as if I'm the only one who speaks the truth--the naked truth--about life and it's many challenges. Maybe it's the writer in me that loves the contrast of highs and lows, a dramatic curve, and wants to express all the emotions invested in a day. Maybe it's the bipolar in me who jumps on the rollercoaster and is dying to tell everybody about the wild ride. But I just wish more people were real about what they were REALLY feeling.

If this were a video blog, right now I'd burst into my very bad version of Barry Manilow's "Feelings."

Example:

At my 15-year college reunion, everyone got out their snapshots of the kids, and waxed poetry about Timmy's cute habit of biting his sister, and Ella's wonderful fascination with Hannah Montana. Yada yada yada. Yeah, kids are great. But when I started to talk about how frustrated I was with David's anxiety--how incredibly exhausted I was trying to balance the needs of my two little ones with my job and my marriage--how sometimes I wish it was just me again, no baggage, they all looked at me as if I were speaking in Mandarin Chinese.

One friend looked up and asked me, "Do you enjoy them at all?"

OF COURSE I DO. What did I say to give you that impression? That I don't love every minute? That I struggle with parts of parenthood?

Ironically, this is all coming from the editor of the book "I Love Being a Mom."

I think that's what's wrong, actually. There are too many books like mine (compiled PRE-breakdown, of course) and too many Oprah episodes, and too many motional speakers and sermons and cheesy nuts (people, not food) giving us the impression that we are way "off" to think that our experiences in life shouldn't be anything but a big happy meal. With a cool toy included! (That comes from a Chinese factory that makes little Chinese boys sweat for 12 hours.) Oops. There I go again.

"F-E-E-L-I-N-G-S .... " (it's playing in the background now, as I close)