The Glass Half Empty
According to my Gallup Strengthsfinder assessment, positivity is my number one strength. Here’s a little blurb from their description of the Positivity Theme: You are generous with praise, quick to smile, and always on the lookout for the positive in the situation. Some call you lighthearted. Others just wish that their glass were as full as yours seems to be. Their world looks better around you because your enthusiasm is contagious. Lacking your energy and optimism, some find their world drab with repetition or, worse, heavy with pressure. Full disclosure: these are not my words, and it’s not what this post is about.
The other night I started thinking about my mom, and felt the crush of grief so deep in my soul. Still?! I thought…it’s been two years since she passed and I sometimes feel like it was yesterday. The melancholy is still with me today, so in an effort to “feel better” I went for a walk this morning in this beautiful park/nature preserve right next to my neighborhood. I did a lot of thinking about how much I miss her, but also a few other things I’m dissatisfied with right now (possibly including how hard it is to change your metabolism when you’re in your sixties but that’s a post for another day). I’m currently obsessing about a relationship that has never worked for some reason, even though I have apologized for what I don’t know that I did, and I have to accept the fact that not everyone thinks I’m awesome. I hate that. I did these stairs SIX times (there are 102 steps; I counted) in a pathetic effort to sweat out the gloom. It didn’t work.
I look around me and I see a wonderful husband, our sweet and gorgeous daughters, loving and devoted sons-in-law, and the best grandkids anyone could ever hope for. I love my home and my neighborhood. I love my family and my friends. Honestly, I truly love my life.
So why the unsettledness, the dissatisfaction, the restlessness? And doesn’t that fly in the face of my so-called positivity? Why can’t I find contentment in all the goodness that exists in my world? Why do I care so much about a person that doesn’t want a relationship with me no matter how hard I try? Why am I trying so hard? And why can’t I make the best of Every. Single. Situation?
How do you live with confusion and sadness when it feels like what is “expected” of you is at war with your heart? When you’re Positivity and you’re sad, you feel broken. And not broken in the way that makes you better, but broken as in WRONG. When someone doesn’t like you it feels like an epic fail. Everything is so much heavier because it goes against what you think you’re SUPPOSED to be. You can’t be anxious or grieving because that’s not your nature. Because shouldn’t you be nothing but Joyful all of the times? So you fight hard to get to what’s “good” in it. And sometimes you can’t. Sometimes climbing 600 stairs doesn't fix or take away what you need to experience, because it's real life.
So I’m going to do my best not to listen to the lie that I’m a fraud and I’m supposed to have contagious enthusiasm, energy and optimism, no matter what. The reality is that I still get sad, and scared, and hopeless sometimes. My circumstances will, at times, be negative. I’m human, positivity isn’t the only thing I am, and that has to be okay for now.