accentuate the positive

I could never get down with 'positive thinking'. It always struck me as smarmy, kiss-ass, people-pleasing, 'don't rain on my parade' bullshit, which is really about not bothering other people and not really at all about helping yourself.

Fuck THAT noise.

But - on the other hand, maybe it's all the same thing. I mean, maybe, this 'accentuate the positive' thing that I'm about to attempt to explore, is really just getting to the same place via a different road.

Maybe I'm like the person in that zen parable about a family who was asked how hard it is to achieve enlightenment. I'm paraphrasing freely, here, so if anyone happens to read this who knows how the story *really* goes, I hope I don't offend by wielding the sword/scalpel of poetic license too heavily, leaving too many bits scattered on the cutting room floor. (Many a mangled/mixed metaphor twixt lips and script.)

My version: Some people walk straight to their 'goal' (or *appear* to) with nary a missed step or deviation along the way. Their road, to the wanderer, appears as a well-paved, smooth, wide throughway that leads directly to their destination.

Whereas I, on the other hand, repeatedly find myself stuck in some thicket, beset by thorns, hacking futilely at some impenetrable wall of brambles, only to realize, knuckles bruised and bloodied from repeated assaults on the prickly impediment to my forward progress, that I could just go AROUND it. Ach. (Or is that, "Ouch?" Like Shrek, when the princess finally manages to pull the arrow out of his butt when he's distracted and forgets to resist her efforts.)

So, the parable:

Some seeker asks this family how they achieved enlightenment.

The mother says, "Oh, is fair amount of work, but, you know, not too bad."

The father says, "Oh, very difficult, many obstacles. I've spent my whole life trying to get there, and I'm still working on it."

The little girl shrugs and says, "Nothing to it. Easy. Like falling off a log."

***

So it's all down to luck, temperament and your approach. Just like everything else in life. Just do what *you* do, one foot in front of the other, and eventually you'll get 'there'. Or not. Because: There is no THERE, there. It's the path itself that is the enlightenment: Just walking your own way. Martha Graham and George Santayana had some quotes I like that seem apropos here:

"There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time this expression is unique and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it! It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open."
~Martha Graham

"Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence." ~George Santayana

***
All that said: I've been noticing, lately, small ways in which I could choose different words (at each juncture, notice the alternative branches, paths, available to you, if possible :P ). On yesterday's fabulous walk, I was balancing on one of those logs bordering the road to the park, and a guy on a bicycle went by with a big grin and said, "Cartwheel!" I was so tired, and feeling so frazzled, and really trying to focus on ME and not get sucked off onto other people's 'stuff', that I got a little irritated and said, "One thing at a time! One thing at a time! Let me take baby steps!" And trailed off with, "It's all I can do to just walk on here at *all*, let alone doing fancy tricks." I don't think he heard that last part, I kind of muttered it under my breath, because I was realizing how ungracious it sounded.

And at the same time as I was saying what I *actually* said, I was *also* thinking, "Wow, that'd be really COOL! To be able to do CARTWHEELS while balancing on this thing! Dude!"

So I *could* have taken his cheerleading as it was meant, as an appreciation and an encouragement, and said, "Oh MAN, I'd LOVE to be able to do that!" And look at is something to aspire to and wish for, whether I ever actually *try* to do it or not. But instead I heard it as yet another 'goad' to try to prod me into doing something I didn't want to do and wasn't ready for (a la my father).

So the old demons haunt us, much as we want to be rid of them. But: I FED that one by saying what I did; and by not resisting it (the demon), I think maybe I FREED myself to have that OTHER thought, which, though I didn't express it at the time, is now able to come forth and be heard, and become an 'option' along the way, a branch, a fork in the road, a possible path.

Sounds like a queueing (sp?) problem to *me*, a 'sorting' problem, where the 'wrong' (i.e., unwanted, not desired) thing is taking precedence at the wrong time.

Sort of as if a synaptic switch needs to be recalibrated (kind of like giving it a good WHACK - /kidding :-) so as to shunt the proper response into the proper channel and hence into its rightful place in the queue, at the necessary moment.

Reverse Pavlov? Replace old message with new, overwrite.