Sunday, December 12, 2010

Positive Attitude or Denial?

It’s funny how I seem to keep ending up back at the same questions. Obviously I’ve not figured them out yet because if I had, I would expect to end up somewhere new. The question is: What is the difference between a positive attitude and denial? And the reverse corollary: What is the difference between pessimism and realism? And a related question: Where do you draw the line? I mean, we all know that we need to have a positive attitude and happy is as happy does, to some extent, but we also need to vent, right? So we don’t stuff our emotions and have them rise to the surface in embarrassing sobbing ways as sometimes seems to happen to some people? (Not me, of course.)

When I was young, I heard a story about a guy who had a phenomenally positive attitude. Whenever anyone asked him how he was, he would respond, "I'm doing great! If I were doing any better, I'd be twins." Well, one day he was in a serious car accident and when they brought him into the ER, it was pretty clear that he would not survive. But amazingly, he was conscious, so the doctor asked him how he was and he responded, "If I were doing any better, I'd be twins." The narrator of the story then would add that it was this attitude that enabled him to survive his horrific injuries.

But I've met people like that in my own life too. Whenever you ask them how their day is going or how they are, they answer “Great!” Pretty much regardless of how the day has actually been. For me, it leads me to not trust them on much of anything. To me, it is an untruth to respond in such a way if everything has been going wrong all day long and you are very frustrated. And, of course, I’m talking from the perspective of a very close friend. Obviously you don’t need to share every gory detail of everything with every person you meet on the street. After all, “Hi, how are ya?” has become a greeting rather than an actual question here in America (a fact which is extremely confusing and disconcerting to many foreigners).

For myself, I may err too far on the side of realism – that is, if I’m having a rough day, I’ll say something like “I’m hanging in there” or “I’ve been better.” True, I could say, “I’ve been worse” because in most cases that would be absolutely true. But would that really be any more positive? I mean, it sounds more negative even though it's meant as a positive. Plus, I guess I work on the assumption that people want to actually know the answer to the question – that they actually care. If I assumed they didn't care, I’d just answer “Fine.”

But how do you know when you’ve crossed the line from being honest to being too negative? Or from being positive to being completely in denial about your situation?

As I said, if I had the answers, I would probably be able to stop asking the questions.