This is wonderfully appropriate for today and always! Send this to The Chicago Sun times or somewhere that others can share! You are beautifully and wonderfully made!
Nor dwelt at the intersection of my Mother, my Father, & The Inerrant King James Version of The Word of God, whose infallibility is based solely on their belief & insistence that it is so.
I always enjoy your insight & appreciate your depth of thought, given that we are inundated with shallow talking points, clickbait, & taglines every damn day. Your writing gives me something worth pondering, rather than the usual pontification of the yappity-yaps on our screens. And I do like to ponder, in fact I’d say I am prone to perpetual ponderance (& apparently abundant alliteration). Unfortunately I am also prone to yappity-yapping & for that I sheepishly apologize.
I realize here you’re speaking about adults, but I do think that children can be born with an inclination toward pessimism or optimism & either one can be fostered or hindered by circumstances, caregivers, etc. And as we develop & age, it becomes more of a choice, as you describe.
I say this because I’ve worked with babies, toddlers, & elementary school age children on their speech & language development both in their homes & at school. (I was also later a special education para for elementary & middle school kids.) Some kids we saw for years, starting at infancy, so over time we observed the evolution of their personalities. Some happy “sunshine babies” (my description) later persevered in spite of their challenging situations & remained happy & optimistic about what they could achieve. Some devolved into frustrated, angry children, who had already given up on themselves by the 3rd grade. Sometimes both happened within the same family.
On the other hand, some agitated, non-cooperative toddlers or kids grew into more hopeful, optimistic older children in spite of less than ideal circumstances. And some remained non-cooperative, almost refusing any help, & grew into unhappy “mad at the world,” children despite everyone’s best efforts to help them succeed.
It’s difficult to differentiate what was choice, circumstantial, or what they came wired with, but you could definitely see the changes. Positive parental involvement was key. Negative parental attitudes & neglect were almost impossible to overcome, but we tried. Part of what we did in homes was modeling for parents of how to interact with their infants & children to facilitate their speech & language development. We often visited their homes 3 to 5 days a week & some parents learned & wanted to help their children. Others ignored everything except their television & cigarettes.
I also grew up in a high control evangelical Christian home & church, adjacent to the “Shiny Happy People” cult. (Yes, my mother made me throw away my Satanic Cabbage Patch doll, based on the teachings of Bill Gothard.) Nothing but forced optimism was acceptable. We all had our masks spackled on until they cracked under the pressure of constant fake smiling.
In this circumstance, the gaslighting ourselves & everyone else in the religion into forced optimism was not the gaslighting that you refer to. It’s one thing to gaslight yourself because you aspire to be a better version of yourself, as you describe. It’s another thing to self-gaslight because you are in a cult & therefore succumb to the shared delusion.
It’s fortuitous that you brought up the soundtrack. No lie, just this week I had an epiphany. Over the years there have been many songs that I wanted to include “at my funeral.” Too many to remember, unlike my husband, whose single memorable, yet cliche request is “Highway To Hell.”
Truth is I hate funerals. (If someone wants to buy a bunch of flowers, take them to a nursing home & distribute them to the residents.) So I’ve decided to skip the service altogether & instead at the end of my obituary, provide a link to my “Upon My Death” Spotify playlist, that has yet to be created. I am also mulling over the idea of creating In Lieu of A Funeral Favors, fancy-wrapping tiny ziplock bags of random ash labeled “This might be my right middle finger, so fuck off, cruel world.”
This is wonderfully appropriate for today and always! Send this to The Chicago Sun times or somewhere that others can share! You are beautifully and wonderfully made!
Optimists haven't spent enough time in my beloved Newark, NJ.
Understood.
Nor dwelt at the intersection of my Mother, my Father, & The Inerrant King James Version of The Word of God, whose infallibility is based solely on their belief & insistence that it is so.
<grin>
I always enjoy your insight & appreciate your depth of thought, given that we are inundated with shallow talking points, clickbait, & taglines every damn day. Your writing gives me something worth pondering, rather than the usual pontification of the yappity-yaps on our screens. And I do like to ponder, in fact I’d say I am prone to perpetual ponderance (& apparently abundant alliteration). Unfortunately I am also prone to yappity-yapping & for that I sheepishly apologize.
I realize here you’re speaking about adults, but I do think that children can be born with an inclination toward pessimism or optimism & either one can be fostered or hindered by circumstances, caregivers, etc. And as we develop & age, it becomes more of a choice, as you describe.
I say this because I’ve worked with babies, toddlers, & elementary school age children on their speech & language development both in their homes & at school. (I was also later a special education para for elementary & middle school kids.) Some kids we saw for years, starting at infancy, so over time we observed the evolution of their personalities. Some happy “sunshine babies” (my description) later persevered in spite of their challenging situations & remained happy & optimistic about what they could achieve. Some devolved into frustrated, angry children, who had already given up on themselves by the 3rd grade. Sometimes both happened within the same family.
On the other hand, some agitated, non-cooperative toddlers or kids grew into more hopeful, optimistic older children in spite of less than ideal circumstances. And some remained non-cooperative, almost refusing any help, & grew into unhappy “mad at the world,” children despite everyone’s best efforts to help them succeed.
It’s difficult to differentiate what was choice, circumstantial, or what they came wired with, but you could definitely see the changes. Positive parental involvement was key. Negative parental attitudes & neglect were almost impossible to overcome, but we tried. Part of what we did in homes was modeling for parents of how to interact with their infants & children to facilitate their speech & language development. We often visited their homes 3 to 5 days a week & some parents learned & wanted to help their children. Others ignored everything except their television & cigarettes.
I also grew up in a high control evangelical Christian home & church, adjacent to the “Shiny Happy People” cult. (Yes, my mother made me throw away my Satanic Cabbage Patch doll, based on the teachings of Bill Gothard.) Nothing but forced optimism was acceptable. We all had our masks spackled on until they cracked under the pressure of constant fake smiling.
In this circumstance, the gaslighting ourselves & everyone else in the religion into forced optimism was not the gaslighting that you refer to. It’s one thing to gaslight yourself because you aspire to be a better version of yourself, as you describe. It’s another thing to self-gaslight because you are in a cult & therefore succumb to the shared delusion.
It’s fortuitous that you brought up the soundtrack. No lie, just this week I had an epiphany. Over the years there have been many songs that I wanted to include “at my funeral.” Too many to remember, unlike my husband, whose single memorable, yet cliche request is “Highway To Hell.”
Truth is I hate funerals. (If someone wants to buy a bunch of flowers, take them to a nursing home & distribute them to the residents.) So I’ve decided to skip the service altogether & instead at the end of my obituary, provide a link to my “Upon My Death” Spotify playlist, that has yet to be created. I am also mulling over the idea of creating In Lieu of A Funeral Favors, fancy-wrapping tiny ziplock bags of random ash labeled “This might be my right middle finger, so fuck off, cruel world.”
Hasta La Vista!
This was a fun read.
I'd say the USA had benefitted from its optimistic tendencies for a long time.