My Pharmaceutical Sandbag Notwithstanding: I don't hate Norman Vincent Peale

The book that surprised me this morning in my search for a random quote was Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking. I scorned it for years--as a book and a type of book. Given my knee-jerk classicism, affection for work of mouldering men mostly white and often colonial, and my inbred cynicism, my not hating Peale eight years ago shocked me. Sort of.

Sure, there is something innately cheery about me which might be a predicator for positivism, and yet I am a depressive. As I've written previously, I finally, late 2008, accepted the fact that I got me a case of lifetime blues, though what anyone means by depression varies, case to case. My troubles until end-of-my-days are mitigated by 100 mg of a pharmaceutical sandbag.

Peale was a Christian preacher and if you, reader, have a knee-jerk reaction against the New Testament or Bible in entirety, hey, I can't blame you. The good that's been done in the name of those books is quiet good. The bad that's been done is loud and known as "history." If you, reader, have, however an aversion to meditation or belief in any kind of power higher than yourself, a Creator, a goddess, I don't know what to say except, fine. I don't.

Yes, I wrote The Future Is Happy(my poetry collection, ahem). Read it and you'll (a) be transformed! and (b undertand my chipper-ness is hard won. I don't predict future happiness for the globe or the poor people on it. I merely use "happy" and "positive" as tools so I'm able to do what I can for the poor, hungry, abused, exploited, raped, used.

Also know I don't agree we can "positive think" our way out of illness. Sometimes you get lucky, sure. Mostly I want to run over with my imaginary, black, four-wheel SUV those who tell cancer patients and other among the physically distressed they can heal themselves. We can hurt ourselves and we can help ourselves. The degree to which we do either is not a function of will. Okay. Three quotes from Peale:

"By our speech we can also achieve quiet reactions. Talk peaceful to be peaceful."

"Fill your mind with all peaceful experiences possible then make planned and deliberate excursions to them in memory."

"Frequently I find that people who are lacking in inner peace are victims of a self-punishment mechanism."

That's enough. The stories he tells are not entirely useful but the spirit behind them isn't objectionable.

Trying to be positive is trying: keep at it, kid

Here at Silver Lining, Inc., we were considering the fact that each of our 3,000 loving arms had hands and each hand requires a squirt of lotion several times a day; and then we wondered how we could afford enough lotion--we are not cheap when it comes to softness, and carefully read lotion labels {Sidebar: Do you really want a lotion containing drying alcohol, even if they tell you it stabilizes the formula? Answer: Keep shopping)--for lotionary purposes our many hands all of which, like their attendant arms, are loving.

Discouraging, the economics are.

But then we believed in our ability to wrap those 3,000 loving arms around each and every one of you (currently there are 11 followers to my blog, here, on blogspot and another 100 or so from Facebook), so there's arms a plenty. Please note that I'm a good hugger, the kind who emits positive energy that's good to be near, and who'll warmly rub your back. Also, being half Swedish, I have innate talents when it comes to massage. And to massage, come many.

So there. So that's an example of me, I'm sorry, "us," {it's so unprofessional to jump from singular to plural and back, though at least I've pretty much remained the first person and in the first person} turning that lump 'o coal to a diamond, just like Superman did, though I'm not wearing tights or a cape. But there is an S for something-or-other on my heart.

Better believe it. And keep turning coals into Lancaster or Newcastle or lovely warm fires to keep you happy in these brisk months.

Your loving and cheerful blogger: S-S-Sarah

Trying to be positive: Sarah, what are you thinking?

So, in reference to my previous post, my quest to become more positive . . .

I just read Nick Hornby's latest novel, Juliet, Naked. It's a quick, charming read. There's a reclusive former, less-than-Leonard Cohen American rock star, Tucker Crowe, who walked out on success twenty years ago. There's the online cult that's formed to unpack and obsess on his every word. There's an unmarried English couple in their late thirties, Duncan and Annie, who live in Goole, a seaside version of Slough (Slough is where Ricky Gervais' The Office took place).

Duncan's head is up his ass. Annie is sensible. Tucker is irresponsible but the best Tucker Crowe he can be (in the spirit of just being who you are). In Hornby fashion, his six-year-old son is his best friend and companion. (Read About a Boy.) And when he visits England, he and Annie meet up.

What struck me, for purposes of this post, was a comment of Annie's, which I'm editing so I don't give away too much. She mentally runs through some events of the past week and tries to figure where she should land--in self-recrimination or somewhere else.

Or would someone with a sunnier disposition come to the conclusion that the last few weeks contained something like seventeen separate miracles?

Clearly Annie's last few weeks have not involved childhood abuse or earthquakes or assault to her person. She is not a survivor of anything but herself. I have a feeling that my scant knowledge of philosophy past Kant is impeding my moving ahead on this, this being my attempt to analyze my less than cheery view of myself. Did I ever read anything else by Sartre than that trilogy? Which was fiction? Because all this (this) could pound down like a cut of red meat to being a trivial existential dialog between Sarah and Sarah.

Hey, Plato, did you ever play with that one? Socrates: Drink and die. Socrates: Okay.

Well, okay I'm second-guessing myself. Certainly if Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote, Bright-Sided: The Perversity of Positive Thinking, were to know I existed she'd laugh at me. Of course her Nickel and Dimed, about the American worker being used and screwed, served to utterly discourage a huge number of job seekers. I met them. Being right doesn't necessarily strike the right tone so you actually help people.

But I'm only trying to help myself realize enough about my life so I don't continually repeat negative or even sadly neutral gestures. Ah, yes, I'm ever in quest of the good life.

I think it's a good quest. I'll continue.

Trying to be positive: a new goal and theme here

About twenty years ago, a friend in Seattle gave me a tape: How to Be Positive. One side was subliminal (they say). The other featured a man with a kind voice filling me with good thoughts about myself (or anyone who listened). New Age hooey?

I told a woman who'd known me since high school. Her response? That's your biggest problem, Sarah, your negativity. My Seattle friend, Lucile, smiled.

Home in my apartment I lay on my fabulous couch, so comfy and roomy it had been and would be the scene of pleasure. I listened. I believe the nice man's voice told me I was being showered with good energy. Within minutes I was crying. He'd hit a nerve.

It could be said that I made my first bid to fight can't-do, negative, disabling, "alcoholic thinking" (via my father) (a most under-your-skin variant of useless thought) at any number of junctures in my twenties and thirties. I read spiritual works, from Baba Ram Das' Be Here Now to Parmahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi to Gurdjieff's Meetings with Remarkable Men to books by both the St. Teresas (the Little Flower in Lisieux and the Interior Castle in Ávila).

A movement therapist had worked with me on relearning walking so I didn't simply use the outer sole--so I connected with the ground. My shoes wore down more evenly. I continued the work here in New York with Alexander Technique, although my aberration was more subtle.

I had become part of a community--Quakers--that worked toward a greater good--as many religions do. I'm no longer a Quaker but there is nothing to throw off in what I learned. I simply a wanderer.

And on.

But this tape was something wholly new and affirmative, which dandled a nerve running to my core holdouts against "positive" "accentuation thereof."

That was, say 1990. This is, for sure, 2010. Lo! Twenty years later and still I'm on the front lines. See, I'm a very smart chick and reasonably talented, but continue to see myself as a misfit. My theory, all psychological insight aside (just like that) (wipe those Freudian childhood connections from the table) is this ongoing struggle I have with alchemy--transforming the easy conclusion that life sucks to the greater truth--a truth I believe but not in a useful way--that it's joy.

So for the next bit of time I am going to wage that battle here, on my blog. Why? Write what you know and I know this obsession of mine with my obsession. I saw it in my father most with his alcoholic negativity, in my oldest sister, second most, maybe because she was the front line, and, well, I'll stop there.

And by the way, the title of my poetry collection, The Future Is Happy, is not predictive but insistent. The gifts are here. Look at Elie Wiesel or Nelson Mandela. If those two can arm wrestle with the devils and evil after what they've been through, so can simple American me.

For Drungil: why I am a positive thinker but don't like happy thoughts

I keep holding back on talking about this part of my life.

My poem Part 2 of 2 Parts: Background to “Every Day I Write God a Letter by Way Of Maintaining Connection & Lessening Rage” -- which follows my poem Part 1 of 2 Parts: Every Day I Write God a Letter by Way Of Maintaining Connection & Lessening Rage in my collection, lays it out. Christian Science mother. Worse than worse case Christian Science scenario, being my mother's unsuccessful twenty-freaking-year attempt to pray away cancer. And THEN the fun began.

As deeply fond as I am of American positive thinking, slyly proud of its link to American "can do" and help of self, to our balanced belief in order by ordering, i.e. to-do lists, championed by the Aristotle of the States - Benjamin Franklin, I have an equal and opposite reaction to my fond reaction.

My rebellion against the implicit insistence that I didn't have a body, that flesh was a trap, that we could think away disease reached its height when I refused to go to Sunday School. I was thirteen or fourteen, and did not make my case rationally but dramatically, by tearing up a piece of C.S. literature and throwing it at my mother.

Oh, the shame I carry for that. I love my mother, who passed in 2001, so much. So many years ago and I realize how I must have broken her mother-heart which had already suffered with my three sisters' typical rebellions. My father is a whole different thing. And that, of course, was the point, breaking her heart, getting back at her for various things, and many of which were out of her control. Home sweet home.

So, lovely Drungil, you walked into a trap that's been set for most of my life; it automatically resets itself. I'm always ready, tensed to fight, to say no, to resist, react. What did Drungil do? She sent me an affirmation from Louise Hay, whose parents were Christian Scientists and who is an alleged queen of American Easy Breezy Good Feeling.

Truth is, I like affirmations. Truth is, when I was at the height of my battle with Satan Himself (that's how I'm going to epitomize my self-destructive thinking and behavior), I would copy out pages of simple affirmations from Florence Scovel Shinn, another American original. She wrote The Game of Life and How to Play It; Your Word Is Your Wand; and other titles I hesitate to list because they all sound hokey and simplistic, but I endorse them. My father was a rager and a drinker and both engender bad thoughts which I imbibed. In my thirties, a friend in Seattle gave me a tape on positive thinking. Another friend who'd known me since high school commented, "That's [negativity] always been your biggest problem." My goal has been to blow that shit up.

I am a friend of positive thinking, also Swedenborg, Spinoza, Socrates, Aristotle, Augustine, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard. No one thinks their way anywhere, not even Mr. Spock, and if he couldn't do it, well, what of the rest of us. We can prepare the psyche (breath, spirit, soul) to receive impressions of the beauty and hope of the world.

The image is of Mrs. Shinn (as she's referred to) ( http://www.florence-scovel-shinn.com/ ).