I am not a Pollyanna

So I was musing yesterday about the capacity of being increasingly aware of good things in the world when an intention is set as a background mindset to expect things to be so. And I fretted momentarily over whether thinking that way meant that I was an unrealistic rose-colored-glasses kind of person. As if it were to say that if you simply wake up and say "today I'm going to be in a happy place" then all of a sudden, everything turns all peachey-keen.

That's not what I mean. I'm not saying a person can pull themselves up from the depths of serious depression and be all sunshine and rainbows in one moment of choice. I know how hard it can be when a toxic thought pattern gets stuck in the monkey mind and weeks of trying to set a good intention for the day feels nothing short of fucking ridiculous.

All the same, I can't help but think that it helps, be it ever so little. If nothing else, it helps to have the awareness that whatever the mental block or toxicity, that it is not the only thing possible to have in one's mind about whatever it that's causing so much distress. That there is room, however slim it appears, to process things differently. And, hopefully, with persistence and patience, one can wedge that opening of possibility just a little bit wider, and gain some equilibrium.

Furthermore in what seems like an odd statement of fact to my mind, I think that things that are tragic and difficult to process are rightly - I don't know what the right word is; the ones that percolate up sound weird somehow - experienced in full? In other words, not turned away from through denial or pharmaceuticals. I think difficulty and suffering have a kind of authenticism value. In learning how to work through them and process them, we enrich ourselves, becoming more aware and sensitive and empathetic. There's no shame to experiencing a difficult thing. But at the same time, I don't think we should give ourselves permission, either, to wallow in it indefinitely, but learn to grow from it. For whatever those two cents are worth!

At bottom: I'm just putting out the suggestion that we go out without the default interpretation being to expect failure and negativity, then our souls or whatever aren't pierced by it quite so often. And maybe, if we give ourselves the opportunity to be receptive to what's positive, we might get to shine just a little bit more from that. If we can adjust that ratio just a little, isn't that a better than not?