On Radical Positivity

I was doing radical positivity the wrong way, but I think I have it figured out now.

This year my New Year’s resolution has been ~radical positivity~. Despite my best efforts, though, the past few months have seen a relentless string of worry and stress, even amidst some of the most objectively wonderful times of my life (I got married and have been on a month-long honeymoon in Europe). After a recent and particularly stressful week where I wasted many of my honeymoon days in Italy by poring over the possible outcomes of a foreseen difficult situation, I concluded that my conception of radical positivity was simply not cutting it. I realized that the way I was being radically positive was like negotiating with a terrorist and I should simply not do it. I’ll explain what I mean.

Despite all the brightness, here I am in the dark. (All art by Jiyoung Park)

What was my conception of radical positivity, exactly? I thought radical positivity was all about the transformation of difficult situations into positive ones by finding the upsides and then focusing only on those. Sometimes these difficult situations would be ones that kind of slap you in the face and cannot be avoided and then do require one to find the upsides. But many of the difficult situations I have been dealing with were perceived or pending situations. As Mark Twain said, "I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened." I agree with him, unfortunately. For me, and I am assuming for many people, a lot of my worry is about the future: what might happen, what might be.

This worry about the future is like a terrorist. Terrorists seek attention and they often do so by presenting terrible and potentially deadly situations. They demand that their terms be accepted and negotiated with, or at the very least that the situations which they present be acknowledged as real and paid much attention to. Similarly, worry demands that the situations it presents be acknowledged and negotiated with.

Anxiously and unobservantly moving through my days

Worry says “Your job is going to be awful every day! You will either be fired or have to quit because you will hate it so much! You will have financial struggles and life will be hard!” In my attempt to be radically positive, I accepted statements like this and searched for the upsides: “It’s ok if I have to look for a new job because there are so many cool opportunities out there! And job hunting might actually be fun (LOL)! And it’s ok if I struggle financially because poverty can be so beautiful and sanctifying!”

Yes, some of these upsides may be legitimate. But what I’ve done wrong is I’ve accepted the situation presented by worry as true without question, when, in fact, it may be far from reality. Worry screams that life is bad because of certain premises. Those premises may be so exaggerated that there is no point in trying to find the upsides at all. Reject the false premises and the inflated situations. Do not give worry your attention or energy with its melodrama. Be like the CIA and do not negotiate with the terrorist at all!

Noticing the light

So, what should you do instead? I don’t think you need to perpetually gaslight yourself into thinking that life your is perfect. Instead, I propose seeing your life the way you might see the lives of others— seeing only the objective, noticeable goods. I personally, tend to see other people’s lives with all their benefits and current joys, thinking the grass is always greener, and I don’t ponder what woes the future could hold for them.

In a similar vein, St. Paul of Tarsus (5-65 AD), tells us, “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable— if anything is excellent or praiseworthy— think about such things”. The first qualifier, though, is important: it has to be true. Any future situation, however likely, is not yet true. So we should not dwell on it.

This instruction from St. Paul does encourage us to be positive, but not in the way I have been trying to be. This is a radical positivity that does not negotiate with the bad; its a positive attitude that dwells on lovely things completely unrelated to the situations which worry presents to us. While worry invites me to dwell on my future career or my future finances, I don’t pretend everything is perfect in those domains (even though they really might turn out just fine in reality ). I am instead turning my attention to unrelated joys, joys that are true and real.

Sitting in the light

This positivity may seem difficult, however, if one is a little bruised by the worry and the alarming pictures it paints. Maybe I’m not emotionally ready to laugh and smile about sunshine and rainbows. Because of this, perhaps a better name for radical positivity would be “radical redirecting”. Instead of trying to be outrageously happy when the worry comes, I am now trying to simply redirect my attention to some neutral, unemotional truth. This is in order to create a chasm between myself and the worry, a wide chasm that may be filled with just empty, unemotional space. To grow this space between myself and the worry, I can go on a walk and watch as people go about their own perfectly complicated and separate lives, read some essay or book unrelated to my worry, call a friend and let myself get entangled in their life and their concerns, forgetting my own for awhile. And eventually, worry leaves me, taking those future situations with it.

Sometimes redirecting just means getting up and going somewhere

One concern, though, would be that this tactic leads to the suppression of one’s emotions. I don’t think this is true at all. This technique actually requires keener observation of my emotions. I have to observe what’s going on in myself, then recognize when an emotion or a string of thoughts is hyperbolic and rooted in worry. I have to observe the worry, know it’s there, and choose to reject its false portrayal of reality.

Another idea I have been thinking about is that peace, genuine peace, is not arrived at by thinking my way through a a tangled mess of concerns. Peace has recently come to me not as a calculated result of dwelling on terrible things and then determining the best path forward but it comes as a fruit of dwelling on happy memories and when I am therefore feeling grateful and loved. Real peace, seems to be something bestowed, suddenly and unexpectedly, and when you have allowed the space for it— when your mind is not busy negotiating with terrorists.

Avoiding the shadows because there is a lot more to life

I don’t want to waste my energy and time, or more specifically waste beautiful days with people I love, on worrying about situations that aren’t even happening to me. I don’t want to live in the future. I want to see my life for what it is when I am living it and be grateful for it. The future holds a million potential problems, but today is manageable and it is good!

I’ll end with a quote from “On Living in an Atomic Age” by C.S. Lewis:

If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds...