“To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The continuous passage of time has brought us to the start of the spring semester.
Asbury’s campus is teeming with over-enthusiastic smiles, professors who are non-infectiously excited about their gen-ed classes, and students who pick out their outfits the night before to save time for their “peaceful” and “productive” morning routines. I am one of those individuals, unfortunately.
To accompany this fresh start’s “This is going to be a great semester!” emails and greetings, I will not be pandering to the same sense of pseudo-eagerness.
I am actually here to tell you, respectfully, that things will get worse.
Before my genuine effort of aid is passed off as obscenely pessimistic or borderline Nihilist, I’d like to argue that restricting yourself to a nausea-inducing amount of contrived positivity is a detriment to self-betterment and will result in a mental health declination.
Here are a few thoughts on why I beg individuals to steer clear of the unequivocally positive side of the mindset spectrum.
You will develop an inaccurate sense of perfection through unrealistic amounts of positivity.
One of my friends is constantly late whenever we spend time together.
If I say that I am picking him up at 10, he will promptly exit his house at 10:30 on a good day. I have tried to manipulate the routine by texting “I’m here” while still sautéing the vegetables for my morning omelet. None of my schemes worked, and I found myself- being an extremely time-oriented person- at wit’s end.
During that time, I also equated positivity with perfection. Suppose I allowed my emotions to get the better of me when I found myself in a situation that was ultimately out of my control. In that case, I must not be wholly mature or succeeding in the journey of bettering my composure and mentality, right?
Having an adverse reaction to something is not only genuinely acceptable in the state of realistic perfection, but it is also innately human. Accidentally mouthing explicative phrases when your metal doorknob hits your left elbow is not a character flaw. Carrying a “bad mood” throughout your day because of exhaustion is not a harmful emotional defect.
It is simply your human body and mind, which is subject to human, materialistic reactions such as fear, doubt, anger, irritation, and more.
You are not a better person if you are unceasingly positive.
Toxic positivity cultivates ignorant invincibility.
An “everything will be fine” attitude is actually a detriment to personal betterment. If you subject yourself to the notion that everything in life will work itself out, you will not be, when the moment arises that something does go wrong, fully equipped to deal with it.
Having a healthy awareness of a things-could-go-wrong-at-any-minute ideology will, in turn, produce a more level-headed response and rational approach to conflict.
For a rational example, last year, my MacBook would freeze up, crash, and delete everything I was currently working on. Although outrageously frustrating, I now save my work multiple times on different drives to ensure that the terrible circumstance never happens again.
More times than not a mindset that teeters on the division between realism and pessimism is defective for mental health. Still, in reality, a healthy amount of pessimism is unconsciously injected into the very construction of our first response to situations and complications.
A paradigm for a healthy balance of negativity and positivity: I will save my work multiple times just in case my laptop crashes. The underlying pessimism in the phrase “just in case” will cultivate prolific cautiousness and a stronger sense of security, enabling you to be more positive.
Discouragement will be almost immediate.
All of this to say, the constant dependence on a positive mindset will never bring you to emotional or personal fulfillment.
In Tobias Weaver’s Stoicism-centered article, Foundation 2: Expectations, on Orion Philosophy, he claims that expectation-induced suffering is caused because “the world and its people will act as they do, not as we expect them to.”
I would like, for the sake of my point, to reorient the quote to, “I will act as I do, not as I expect myself to.”
Whether you aim to remain consistent in positivity or not, you will always succumb to a natural tendency to react to situations with a “negative mindset.” Do not get discouraged when life appears to be less hopeful or rewarding.
Wisdom and contentment come through being real.