Thursday, July 5, 2007 at 2:02am
Don't cry; be happy
Column: wavelength
I can be a Pollyanna with the best of them. I can sling platitudes like a short-order cook on Sunday morning. I have made buckets of lemonade from avalanches of lemons. I am good at finding the rainbow, being cheerful and all that good positive-attitude stuff. I have even been known as someone who can find the ray of hope in the most disastrous of situations — and I like doing that. I take pride in those resilient, faith-filled parts of my nature.
However, where I am having difficulty is the insistence, seemingly by almost everyone from the self-help and personal development camps, that negative attitudes are a "no-no."
It seems to me that there is an overriding collective belief that you need to, as the song so aptly says, "smile when your heart is breaking." You are to leapfrog over your twisted feelings and knotted conflicts and quickly jump into a unified nirvana state where all is peace, bliss and 1,000-count bedsheets. In other words: Don't cry; be happy.
Happy is fine. Happy is great, but not 100 percent of the time. That feels false, unrealistic and terribly unbalanced. Life is not 100 percent of any one thing; life is 100 percent of every little thing.
Am I supposed to swallow my anger, fear or sadness and smile politely because your worldview is cheerier than mine at this exact moment? What happened to being in the now, staying present and being mindful? If my present is filled with sadness, wouldn't it make sense for me to feel my sadness, rather than deny its melancholy existence?
Think of the good old-fashioned snit. You get good and cranky and let that snarkiness simmer for a bit until it boils off, like alcohol on Cherries Jubilee. From my perspective you end up saner and — yes, I dare say — even sweeter for letting your snit come to a full heat and release itself like steam across the kitchen counter.
Then there is the wonderful story about fear. The monk's student is sent to his room for a night's rest. The student becomes startled; in the semi-darkness, he sees a snake in the corner of his room. The student is terrified. He has no breath; his heart is banging against his chest. He beseeches God for rescue, but to no avail. After hour upon hour of sheer panic, the student says to God, "I am exhausted, I am no longer afraid. If I am to die, then I will die, but now I must close my eyes." And so the student falls asleep. When he awakes in the morning, he sees a coiled rope in the corner of his room. There was no snake.
I wonder where authentic feelings, process and embracing your shadow fit into this scene of finely wrought plastic smiles. Are we all to turn into robotic Stepford folks who smile blankly at everything? Are we to be so anesthetized that we no longer can feel outrage? Are we sworn to happiness in order to feel whole, healthy and spiritually adept? Are we to forgo plumbing the depths of our psyches so everything remains happy, happy, happy? Is everything to remain Paris Hilton superficial?
I hope not. Good God, I hope not.
Happiness has a place. Happiness, however, is not the destination. Wouldn't you agree that alignment with Spirit is the actual goal of our earthly wanderings? And, if you so agree, wouldn't you concur that our earthly wanderings are the way we find the divine? And doesn't it seem probable that our earthly wanderings take us through almost every possible feeling and emotion in order to open us up to the divine spark within?
Don't get me wrong, I am up for happiness. And I most certainly am open to joy, the ultimate of feel-good emotions that, to me, speaks of high energy, right alignment and divine connection.
I just feel we have allowed ourselves to get too one-sided. It has become black and white. When, in reality, we have before us a whole palette of colors, each representing a variation of a theme from our hearts.
We have embraced happiness at the cost of ignoring the darker, more demanding feelings, such as anger, doubt, fear and sadness. And these murkier, less polite and more unruly emotions often have the greatest lessons to teach us.
It's like I tell the kids I counsel. Feelings are not good or bad; they just are. And feelings are a lot like a multi-scooped ice cream cone. You like some flavors better than others, but they all belong to you.
Feelings-wise, it does not have to be "either/or." I suggest it can be "and/and." There is room for happiness and sadness — even at the same time. We human beings are complicated, multidimensional beings. We can feel many feelings, and we can feel them all at once, one at a time or, even, intermittently.
Feelings are a true gift from the gods. Feelings allow us to experience the range of our humanness, and they open the door for us to experience a communion with the divine.
Given that our feelings are a divine gift, wouldn't it be wise to consider their value?
— — —
Dr. Adele Ryan McDowell, Ph.D., is a psychologist, empath and shaman who likes looking at life with the big viewfinder. Her email address is {email ARMCDOWELL@aol.com}ARMCDOWELL@aol.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Adele Ryan McDowell.
However, where I am having difficulty is the insistence, seemingly by almost everyone from the self-help and personal development camps, that negative attitudes are a "no-no."
It seems to me that there is an overriding collective belief that you need to, as the song so aptly says, "smile when your heart is breaking." You are to leapfrog over your twisted feelings and knotted conflicts and quickly jump into a unified nirvana state where all is peace, bliss and 1,000-count bedsheets. In other words: Don't cry; be happy.
Happy is fine. Happy is great, but not 100 percent of the time. That feels false, unrealistic and terribly unbalanced. Life is not 100 percent of any one thing; life is 100 percent of every little thing.
Am I supposed to swallow my anger, fear or sadness and smile politely because your worldview is cheerier than mine at this exact moment? What happened to being in the now, staying present and being mindful? If my present is filled with sadness, wouldn't it make sense for me to feel my sadness, rather than deny its melancholy existence?
Think of the good old-fashioned snit. You get good and cranky and let that snarkiness simmer for a bit until it boils off, like alcohol on Cherries Jubilee. From my perspective you end up saner and — yes, I dare say — even sweeter for letting your snit come to a full heat and release itself like steam across the kitchen counter.
Then there is the wonderful story about fear. The monk's student is sent to his room for a night's rest. The student becomes startled; in the semi-darkness, he sees a snake in the corner of his room. The student is terrified. He has no breath; his heart is banging against his chest. He beseeches God for rescue, but to no avail. After hour upon hour of sheer panic, the student says to God, "I am exhausted, I am no longer afraid. If I am to die, then I will die, but now I must close my eyes." And so the student falls asleep. When he awakes in the morning, he sees a coiled rope in the corner of his room. There was no snake.
I wonder where authentic feelings, process and embracing your shadow fit into this scene of finely wrought plastic smiles. Are we all to turn into robotic Stepford folks who smile blankly at everything? Are we to be so anesthetized that we no longer can feel outrage? Are we sworn to happiness in order to feel whole, healthy and spiritually adept? Are we to forgo plumbing the depths of our psyches so everything remains happy, happy, happy? Is everything to remain Paris Hilton superficial?
I hope not. Good God, I hope not.
Happiness has a place. Happiness, however, is not the destination. Wouldn't you agree that alignment with Spirit is the actual goal of our earthly wanderings? And, if you so agree, wouldn't you concur that our earthly wanderings are the way we find the divine? And doesn't it seem probable that our earthly wanderings take us through almost every possible feeling and emotion in order to open us up to the divine spark within?
Don't get me wrong, I am up for happiness. And I most certainly am open to joy, the ultimate of feel-good emotions that, to me, speaks of high energy, right alignment and divine connection.
I just feel we have allowed ourselves to get too one-sided. It has become black and white. When, in reality, we have before us a whole palette of colors, each representing a variation of a theme from our hearts.
We have embraced happiness at the cost of ignoring the darker, more demanding feelings, such as anger, doubt, fear and sadness. And these murkier, less polite and more unruly emotions often have the greatest lessons to teach us.
It's like I tell the kids I counsel. Feelings are not good or bad; they just are. And feelings are a lot like a multi-scooped ice cream cone. You like some flavors better than others, but they all belong to you.
Feelings-wise, it does not have to be "either/or." I suggest it can be "and/and." There is room for happiness and sadness — even at the same time. We human beings are complicated, multidimensional beings. We can feel many feelings, and we can feel them all at once, one at a time or, even, intermittently.
Feelings are a true gift from the gods. Feelings allow us to experience the range of our humanness, and they open the door for us to experience a communion with the divine.
Given that our feelings are a divine gift, wouldn't it be wise to consider their value?
— — —
Dr. Adele Ryan McDowell, Ph.D., is a psychologist, empath and shaman who likes looking at life with the big viewfinder. Her email address is {email ARMCDOWELL@aol.com}ARMCDOWELL@aol.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Adele Ryan McDowell.