I get tired of being admonished to ‘Have a positive mental attitude.’ Aside from the redundancy (‘mental’ could be left out), the words are a smileface pasted over the gravitas of human experience. I’ll have a realistic mental attitude, thanks.
At least that was what I thought before knowing a woman whose positive attitude is all she’s got. Reduced by illness from 130 to 65 pounds, she soldiers on, pronouncing each new therapy her breakthrough. To visit her is to be rewarded. My projects excite her and she remains on track with her own, cadging help where she can. Best, she’s still a noodge in that perky, pesky way of hers. Her personality will not alter itself to the illness, and there is a feisty dignity about her. You can’t pity somebody who has the capacity to piss you off.
It’ll surely kill her, this malady, and there she’ll be in heaven, her positive mental attitude all fulfilled, the smileface resplendent.
I still cringe when somebody messes around with my attitude. It’s the most intimate thing I’ve got, and I won’t have it dictated by purveyors of rah rah motivational tapes. Sometimes I find positivity in brooding and sulking. I’m not sure what a positive attitude is at any given time, or whether I have what it takes for one, which, in the last analysis, is probably guts.
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