Category: A year of thinking positively

Where am I going? How do I get there?

These are big questions that can be overwhelming.

Some people seem to cruise on through. Graduate from high school. Get some further schooling or training. Get a job. Get married. Have some kids. Retire.

In between, the details can be messy but if you stick to the broad strokes, things should work out and often do, as our vast suburbs prove. It might be a tad hard to tell one house, crescent or cul-de-sac from the other, but life in the ‘burbs is by most measures good. Somewhere just north of half of all Americans enjoy the prosperity of suburban life: good quality housing, access to services, jobs and education. They pay their taxes and benefit from roads, public transportation, government, policing and defence.

And if you don’t live there or still feel lost?

There is a vast literature of self-help, personal coaches or even this school to turn to, ostentatiously called The School of Life, started by philosopher Alain de Botton:  https://www.theschooloflife.com.

And then, if you’re really lost, there’s GPS.

When I moved up to the small community where I live on the edge of the Canadian wilderness, I thought I would be able to wander about more or less freely. I expected to find myself and my way.

Turns out to be not so simple. If you are not on a paved road, or a logging road, or a quad trail through the bush or a marked hiking trail, you (I mean me) are lost. Or you (me) might be; who wants to find out?

Today, we are in a conflicted position about the wilderness. There is no edge between civilization and wilderness. Satellites have destoyed remoteness. At least as long as you have a device. God help you if you don’t; ‘The Wild’ is indifferent to your survival and will destroy you as much as soon as give you the time of day.

There’s something to that, to this tension between known and unknown, technology and native (raw?) knowledge. Orienteering. Wayfinding.

And buried within this duality, there is something to be learned about positivity.

Global Positioning System (GPS) on Wikipedia.

LA based illustrator Mauro Gatti has started a positivity project for much the same reasons I’ve started this Year of Thinking Positively blog thread. He gleans good news from around the world then does an illustration and posts it to Instagram here, The Happiness Broadcast – https://www.instagram.com/the_happy_broadcast/.

I like that word “broadcast”. From a time when journalism meant something.

Let’s add Gatti’s efforts to those of David Byrne whose project Reasons to be Cheerful – https://reasonstobecheerful.world. is similarly bringing alternate media, critical yet positive, into the mainstream.

So many of my friends sent me personal messages of encouragement and advice in response to my plea for help in setting my direction for the next year, it was very touching. A few of their comments are below. It seems that “positivity” isn’t just that; it’s connected to things like ‘noticing’ and ‘gratitude’. And it isn’t just one or the other, optimism or pessimism, there’s that thing called balance.

A: “It is hard to just “think more positively” without a how do you do that which then would lead me to agreeing with “noticing more” and yet I would take it one step farther to say what do you do when you notice? So my suggestion would be in order to practice thinking more positively, notice more and follow it up with uttering “thank you” or expressing gratitude for every little thing you notice that makes you stop and think. I have found the practice of Gratitude for the everyday events and persons crossing your path are the caveat to feeling more peaceful, joyful and dare I say positive about life.‎”

B: “I like A Year of Not Thinking.‎ Have you read ‘On Having No Head’ by Douglas Harding? No advice except to do the writing at same time every day without exception.

“Or to watch negative thoughts unjudgementally and see where they come from and where they go and just relegate them to your other thoughts and feelings and sensations and not give them any special role to influence actions and speech. And remember you can change how you feel in an instant. It doesn’t take longer.

“How to be positive in Hell is another title.

“Everyone thinks their own age is the worst in history but ours really is!

“Reading from others who have dealt with the same issue would be good I think of Montaigne’s essays as an example.”

‎C: “I think pessimisism can have much more depth and wit than optimism, but then you have to live without much joy. Somewhere there is balance.”