A few other dbm bloggers have been listing their positives each week or setting goals and updating their progress. I struggle to think of positive things in my life. Maybe I am hard-wired for the negative.
When I look back over my life, it is the negative things that I remember, that I feel have shaped who I am and the direction that my life took. It's the regrets that are burned into my memory more vividly, perhaps because I have replayed them so many times.
I don't want to teach Beanie to be so negative. I don't want her to be a cynic.
Now, sitting here today, playing with Beanie daily, I find it hard to be lighthearted. This is a trend that has developed over the last five or six years. This trend was only reinforced by two years of grief.
My laughs are sarcastic, sardonic, and mirthless, not hearty and robust or genuine.
I think I will try to re-train myself. I will focus on the positive. I will follow the good examples of Barb and Anna and Mrs. Spit, listing the positives and working toward goals.
It seems to me that the positive things are always so small, the minutia of daily life, while the negative things are the big deals. (A nice sunset vs, say, a dead baby) Do you think this is true or just my wiring?
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4 comments:
I think the big negatives and positives happen rarely. Weddings, live babies and such are HUGE positive events (in hindsight my marriage was not an overall positive experience but the wedding part was nice).
Then there are little negatives and positives that happen everyday and acknowledging the beautiful small things that happen everyday is at least supposedly good for you.
The huge bad things must be treated differently in our brains though because it is way easier to ruminate over those for YEARS while little bad things and all positive things are more easily forgotten. Why is it easier to re-live times of sorrow, etc, than truly feel throughout your whole body the moment you made your wedding vows?
Beanie is lucky to have you as a mom :)
It's SO hard for me at the moment and it takes a concerted and sustained effort to find five good things around me over just 7 days.
But I think it's good practice for the heavy hearted and hopefully the small, rare, seemingly insignificant good things will become more and more common and one day lighten my own heart. If only a little.
Sunset V Dead baby/ies? NO comparison.
But pleasure taken in the sunset V dark gnawing sadness?
xxx
I think I tend to focus to much on the negative too. Sometimes I catch and correct myself and sometimes I don't.
I don't know if it's that the positive things are smaller - so much as they are easier to overlook because they feel so natural.
It's so interesting that you posted this, because I have been thinking along these lines a lot lately.
I think the positives we often take for granted. Speaking for my family, we can comfortably buy whatever food and clothing we need, we have a nice home, and our health and education. So infinitely better off than much of the world. I can't imagine living in fear of violence or not having access to schools or worrying about feeding my family.
I've been trying to focus on the positives too. Dead baby= HUGE negative, but I try to enjoy the blessings I do have. Easier said than done many days, but I'm trying.
I agree with AnnaMarie- Beanie is lucky to have such a great mom.
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