It’s become a ritual, and I recently realized it probably needs to stop.
Most every morning as I glide past our delightful receptionist on the way to my office, our daily dance of greeting goes something like this:
Me: “Good morning, Faye.”
Her: “Good morning, Gary. How are you?”
Me: “I’m okay. Muddling along…”
Now it’s a bit of a joke between us, but it didn’t start out that way. I have often been deadly serious with my hang-dog expression and melancholy Eeyore intonation, feeling somehow obligated to reflect whatever dark cloud happened to be hanging over me that day. And it’s an addiction to unnecessary truth-telling that I’m having a tough time breaking.
Especially working in long-term care these days, we have plenty of good reasons to wake up to sensations of numbness, fatigue or dread. If you’re like me, you sometimes rise feeling simultaneously depressed and oppressed, and get ready for work like you’re preparing for your own execution.
Sometimes as I walk heavily from the car, it seems like I accidentally dressed in one of those weighted radiation protectors they flop on your chest at the dentist, and am carrying with me every accrued negative thought and fear.
“Woe is me,” I whimper to my poor beleaguered self. “You are definitely a martyr, and a man more sinned against than sinning,” adds the ghost of King Lear.
So this, then, is the unfair onslaught adorable Faye inevitably faces each day as I approach, but somehow she still greets me with a smile as I prepare to unleash my usual torrent of negativity. And somehow her own genuine optimism brought me to self-awareness and a decision to attempt an adjustment of my rusty mindset.
Because even if it seems to me I have every valid excuse to share my occasional episodes of darkness and discouragement with everyone who makes the mistake of asking how I am, I need to simply keep my “muddling” comments to myself. There’s enough negativity in the world without me adding to the cloud.
That’s easy to say, of course, but tougher to do, as I still prove almost every minute of every day. It even makes me long for a dog-eared copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, published in 1952 by minister Norman Vincent Peale, in a sincere desire to let his frequently mocked words work their magic.
“Change your thoughts, and you change your world,” he wrote. And you know what? That legendary writer of unbearable cliches is absolutely right, and he’s not alone. History is littered with influential figures who wielded positivity mantras like bayonets.
“Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow,” Helen Keller apparently said.
“Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier,” believed Colin Powell.
“I’m taking all the negatives in my life, and turning them into a positive,” spoke the philosopher Pitbull to the multitudes of disciples prostrate before him.
Even legendary superhero Chuck Norris ascribes to this belief. “A lot of times people look at the negative side of what they feel they can’t do. I always look on the positive side of what I can do,” he said to someone, just before roundhouse kicking them in the face.
The positivity gospel is rife with such aphorisms, and if this was an old-fashioned tent revival, I’d be raising my hand during the alter call and moving toward the pulpit with tears streaming down my face. I’d be begging to be reborn as someone determined to always seek to express the bright side, even, and especially, if it’s not the way I really feel.
And when that rousing tent meeting ends with a stirring congregational singing of “Give Me That Old-Time Religion,” I’m going to change the words just slightly. “If it’s good enough for Walker, then it’s good enough for me.”
Things I Think is written by Gary Tetz, a two-time national Silver Medalist and three-time regional Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Association of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) awards program, as well as an Award of Excellence honoree in the APEX Awards. He’s been amusing, inspiring, informing and sometimes befuddling long-term care readers worldwide since the end of a previous century. He is a writer and video producer for Consonus Healthcare Services in Portland, OR.
The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.
