I’ve recently irritated someone with my upbeat optimistic approach to facing life’s challenges. On the other hand someone else told me I shouldn’t focus so much on how hard it all is.
Long ago I learned that if I’m being criticised by the left and the right, it means I’m standing somewhere in the center.
To answer yet a third person, I think I get excited about growing and healing because it’s my temperament. You know some of us are Tigger and others are Eyore. Others are Piglet or Rabbit or Kanga or Pooh. I’m a little bit Boing! But I also think it comes down to choice.
Choice is a tricky thing when it comes to being a parent. To use a graphic example, some of us may not even have chosen to have the sex that conceived our child. Others of us carefully planned and prepared. Some of us need alone time to recharge while some of us thrive from constant busyness and get depressed to be alone too much. So where’s the choice?
To bring it to the harsh basics, at some point you chose not to terminate the pregnancy. At some point you chose to keep the born baby. At some point (many daily points usually) you chose not to walk away from the responsibility of raising the child. Those are the choices you’ve apparently made. So what now?
Parenting, like life, is not all sunshine and roses. It’s freakin’ hard a lot of the time. I know that. I come from a long line of victims and moaners. Our family uncovered a suitcase of letters between our great-grandparents and their parents that span overseas migrations. Amazing right? But these letters are so moany and complainy that even my optimistic, generationally-interested aunt couldn’t plough her way through the whole suitcase. It’s our genetic baggage. So I’ve been trained in ‘hard’. I know it. I’ve lived it. I deal with it in my work. Life can be HARD. Parenting can be even harder.
I find life easier when I look at what good things the hard can offer me. Sure, maybe I don’t have to go Boing! Boing! about it to the other animals in the forest – but Tiggers can add a certain zing don’t you think? Or they’re just irritating.
Here’s my choice; I can flop around and wallow in how hard it is, and BELIEVE me I can do that (remember my baggage…), or I can say, “Hmmm, what’ve we got here?” and I can try to make me something new and cool from what initially looks like junk – even if I don’t do it very well. Life for me is more interesting, fun and inspirational when I choose the latter. Otherwise it’s just hard.
It’s a matter of choice.
What do you choose and why?
I choose to see the bright side. Always. Otherwise…what do you have really except misery?
Yes,me too – but it doesn’t mean pretending the misery doesn’t exist too. I think that’s the confusion. Even though some people definitely do use ‘seeing the bright side’ as a form of being in denial it doesn’t have to be the same thing.
I disagree, respectfully. Finding a silver lining means that you accept that whatever it is exists- you would have to to see the “bright side” of it, right?
There are people that choose to ignore negativity in any form but I think that denotes deeper rooted issues. As opposed to being a person that understands that life will always have sharp edges and instead of letting every cut wound you to the core…you dig deep and find the good in the bad. Or at least, accept that bad things happen for a reason.
I don’t think it’s always denial to say that rain always brings new life. I think the only denial is pretending it doesn’t rain. 🙁
I love the smell of respectful disagreement in the morning!
But I don’t think we disagree on this at all. I think we are saying the same thing in different words. And thank you for your words.
I work with people in their ‘golden years’ – age 70 and up. I have one woman who has a really bad hunchback and has to have dialysis three times a week. Her positive attitude to life means she enjoys it so much more than her peers, who have full use of their body but tend to see the negative aspects of their lives. It IS a matter of choice. I think her’s pays off BIG time!
I totally agree with you! It’s amazing how the attitude ‘choices’ we’ve made over time become more and more evident the older we get. I have heard it said that we become more ‘ourselves’ the older we get.
I also used to work with people in their ‘golden years’ whose favorite quote to me was Bette Davis’, “Old age is not for sissies!”
I remember one outstanding 103-year old woman with sparkling blue eyes and filled with life energy and another who, while the youngest in the group at the tender age of 65, was the tiredest and saddest – in great part through daily choice.
I guess if you bring it into this context, we are creating our future with the choices we make now. And showing our children to do the same. Yikes!