Category: Kendra

Positively Positive

posted 16th December 2009    Written by: Kendra    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kendra, Life Lesson, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1

SmilingBarbara Ehrenreich has been making the rounds in support of her new book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. In it, Ms.Ehrenreich blames positivity for everything from the decline in social justice movements to a rise in social irresponsibility.

Curmudgeons everywhere have been rejoicing.

“Finally”, they’re saying in their knowing way, which almost but doesn’t quite, resemble joy “those Pollyanna’s are getting their comeuppance.”

There is something to be said for Ehrenreich’s argument. The fable The Ant and the Grasshopper, for example, exists to remind us that regardless of our outlook, times are not always bright. Practically speaking unemployment, illness or other unexpected events can blindside us which is why it’s important to shore up a reserve: of money, of good will, but also, of happiness.

Specifically what she is attacking is, The so-called ‘Rule of Attraction’ made popular by the movie and book The Secret. At its core (if you’ve been under a rock and have managed to ignore its teachings, and if you have can I join you in this happy wonderland?) is the belief that we attract what we focus on (like attracts like). If we focus on our unemployment for example, we attract being unemployed. We should instead focus our attention on what we want, a job for example.

Ehrenreich argues that because people were focusing on things like wealth, they allowed themselves to purchase homes without worrying if they could afford them. If they thought about the issue at all, they figured their positive thoughts would be enough to attract the money when the money was necessary. In addition, she says that this line of thinking puts tremendous responsibility on people going through trying times to put on a happy face (an idea I myself touched on awhile back) and it in effects indicts those with serious illnesses by saying they somehow attracted their illnesses.

While her arguments have validity: many of us do need a healthy sense of reality; spiritual practices can only do so much. Even the Bible stresses action (a great joke on that front can be found here). We must also recognize that practically speaking what keeps most people motivated is well… a certain level of willful positivity.

Studies have shown that depressed individuals often have a clearer view of reality than their non-depressed counterparts. Being healthy it turns out, involves a healthy amount of self-delusion.

I should know.

Being unemployed, sucks, what keeps me churning out job applications is the hope (and vision) that doing so will eventually land me a job. Similarly I can’t think of anyone who gets married thinking their marriage will end in divorce, or decides to have children thinking that their wee one will grow up to be a serial killer.

While a healthy amount of realism helps us to prepare for unexpected shocks, hiccups and bumps, it’s positivity that propels us forward. The little engine that could, after all, did not manage to chug his way up the mountain declaring “I think I can’t”.

kendra-bio1

photo credit : mcbeth

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Taking Time Out for Other People

posted 8th December 2009    Written by: Kendra    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kendra, Life Lesson, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1

heart on your handThe makers of the anti-anxiety and anti-depressant drug Lexapro have a handy online guide for depression screening.

I took the quiz twice.

The first time I answered the questions in the physical and mental space I was at the beginning of this month. The second time I took the quiz I as I’m feeling now.

A month ago, in their opinion I was severely, severely depressed. And now? I am currently mildly depressed. This, my friends, is what we call progress.

I am, mostly, feeling better. Nothing in my life has really changed, but I am doing much better at handling the curve balls and mood swings. I’m settling into myself, this new self that is not the naïf I was two years ago, but is not the jaded cynic I was two months ago.

I’m not happy, but I can see myself getting there.

With this newfound sense of perspective, I found myself last night for the first time in a long time thinking of someone other than myself as I said my evening prayers.

Yes, I pray before bedtime… you never know when you just might not wake up.

Anyway as I lay in bed chatting with my maker about my day, my hopes, my dreams I found myself less concerned with…myself and more concerned with other people. I found myself praying for the sorta friend who’d recently lost a parent; the vague acquaintance that I recently learned has been unemployed for six months with the awful burden of raising a family to boot, and the friend who has been unemployed for over a year.

A lot of people, people I know even… are suffering.

I think one of the upsides of the QLC – that it forces some serious soul searching – is also one of its downsides. We can get a little too caught up in our head, and that ladies and gents is a recipe both for narcissism and some serious crazy making.

Trust me.

Today in the mail a friend sent me a necklace with the word ‘believe’ on it. She said she saw it and instantly thought of me.

I cried.

While it’s important to take some time out for self, it’s important also I think to take time out for others. To remind people, even people we don’t know so well, even people we don’t really like, that they matter.

Because they do. And so do you.

kendra-bio1

photo credit : wolfsoul

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Giving Thanks

posted 1st December 2009    Written by: Kendra    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kendra, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1

thank you beachFellow blogger Robert Brault says that, “There is no such thing as gratitude unexpressed. If it is unexpressed, it is plain, old-fashioned ingratitude,” and I’m inclined to agree. As I’ve already touched upon, in the accounting of our memories we’re often more inclined to remember the bad stuff than the good stuff. The good stuff fades if we let it, while the bad stuff sticks out in horrid contrast, feeding into a descending spiral of gloom, doom and victimhood.

That kind of thinking will kill us if we let it.

So how do we keep ourselves upbeat, connected to our core, and to what I honestly believe is a thread of goodness trying its best to lift us upward towards genuine happiness, in a world that for all of its talk of rules of attraction and positivity, seems intent upon inundating us with an ever growing list of fears and horrors (see: the evening news)?

In other words, how do we during this Thanksgiving Season, and all year long really, stay grateful?

I’ve found a morning prayer of thanks for another day goes a long day towards helping to put me in a thankful state of mind. Before I even open my eyes I say something like thank you for this day, or thank you for this warm bed, or thank you for this quiet moment.

Similarly, closing each day by writing a quick gratitude list does a lot to help me reframe my life so I can remember the wonderful things instead of giving into the Negative Nellie need to obsessively cataloguing every perceived slight, or inconvenience, or hardship that flitted across my mind that day.

It’s a bit after 9:30AM as I write this on a blustery November day and thus far

I’ve found the following things to be grateful for:

·         My mom who has been sick all week felt good enough to go to work today, which not only speaks wonders to her health, but has the added benefit of giving me some extra quiet time I don’t have when the family is around.

·         There is a Dr. Who Marathon on the tele which means there’s a good chance I will spend the day annoying those around me with my deliciously bad British accent.

·         I have a job interview today for a job I want, for an organization that seems great, in a fun part of the city.

·         It’s sunny today which means I can wear my fancy blue coat to my job interview.

·         Oreo, our family kitten has fallen off the window sill at least three times. This is an action I find uproariously funny despite the fact that he does this everyday several times a day. He is now eyeing our hanging ivy like it is his prey.

·         I am in a good mood for no specific reason and feel a bit like my old darkly happy self than I have in ages. It’s like I’m buzzing from the inside.

·         Stratejoy! I look at where I was when I started writing this blog four months ago and where I am now and I am in such an emotionally better place even if the details of my life haven’t changed so much. Writing this blog has been such a good outlet, forcing me to express myself and really think about myself and my problems and come to the very important conclusion that I was creating most of my pain.

·         You guys! The comments on the blog have been awesome and as much as I get cathartic release in talking about this stuff, hearing that other people feel similarly is wonderful. Misery loves company, after all, and so does good cheer! Hear, hear!

kendra-bio1

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Voices Carry

posted 24th November 2009    Written by: Kendra    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kendra, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1

open heartSo every week I write this blog, and when it goes live I send a mass e-mail out to my friends and repost it on Facebook.

Almost every week I get a phone call, or an e-mail, or a comment on either the blog or on Facebook from a friend or stranger telling me that they understand what I’m feeling, because they’re feeling it too and they want to reassure me that I’m not alone, or that they find comfort in my words and in knowing that they’re not alone.

We are an odd species aren’t we?

We crave companionship; humans – even the most introverted amongst us – are by nature a communal animal.

We need each other.

But we spend most of our time pretending that we don’t.

It is hard to be emotionally vulnerable. I know. This may sound contradictory given my status as a blogger, but I am an intensely private person.  Anything beyond the broadest outlines of my life’s experiences is only known to the people who have lived through those experiences with me.

Put another way, what I’ve written on this blog is probably about as much as most of the people that I consider my friends know about my life, excluding direct experiences (I am, however, more than happy to discuss my bowel movements and my current emotional state with aplomb, I do an excellent job of creating intimacy without being actually intimate).

Case in point, I was at lunch about a month ago with a friend, when he made a passing comment based on a banal but false assumption about a member of my family.  I paused for a moment, wondering if I should correct him, before reluctantly informing him that his assumption was actually incorrect (I have this thing about lying, even by omission, I mostly don’t do it).  He looked at me, shocked, before stating in hushed tones “that he didn’t know that”.

What he didn’t know wasn’t that important (but, no I’m not telling you). It wasn’t anything dramatic like my dad being in prison (he’s not, it’s just an example), it was on the level of finding out that I’d gone to Catholic school, but the detail wasn’t about me and so I’d felt zero need to share it, even with someone who’d become a fast friend and who I was regularly chatting with for several hours every day.

He didn’t know the detail, because among the many things that I don’t talk about a big one is I don’t talk about my family. My friend Kam says I talk about my family so rarely it’s almost as though I don’t have one.  To me this is funny, because when I’m not living at home I talk to my family as often as once a week and at least once a month. I just don’t talk about them.

But lately I’ve been wondering if this need for privacy, to erect barriers between us and the world is always such a good thing. On the one hand, we do end up protected from people who might deliberately or not-so-deliberately be emotionally harmful. On the other hand, however, we end up suffering alone during these periods of transition.

And so maybe, in order to lighten up, we should open up, even if we’re picky with whom we open up to.

kendra-bio1

photo credit : lady-bug

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Consolation, Desolation

posted 17th November 2009    Written by: Kendra    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kendra, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1

ConsolationI was laying in bed vaguely watching back-to-back-to-back rerun episodes of the canceled television series Joan of Arcadia when the exact language for what I had been trying for weeks to craft into words to describe my own emotional state over the past few months to my friends were beautifully spoken by one of the show’s principal characters.

The character, Helen, a mother who has just learned that her daughter has been rushed to the hospital with a serious illness just a year or so after her eldest son had been permanently paralyzed in a car accident says to her husband, Will, who has just expressed feelings of deep despair over a life that seems to be spiraling into darkness:

Helen: We go through times of consolation and desolation. Consolation is when things are flowing, and everything makes sense, and you feel connected… Desolation is the other thing. When you are scared and confused and alone and out of step, and your cell phone doesn’t work, and your daughter gets sick and the cops come to the door and say there’s been an accident. God retreats, and you’re left with your own thoughts, and those thoughts are dark. There are answers there… And strength.

Will: How long does desolation last?

Helen: As long as it needs to.

I found real comfort in her words.

Sometimes, life knocks us down and we just have to feel sad for awhile. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not angst, or depression, it’s just sadness. I’m not disregarding depression, which can be debilitating, but I think it’s too often lumped together. Sadness is a natural human state, much like happiness is.

And just like joy is a response to a circumstance, so too is sadness.

Sadness can tell us that we need to look inside ourselves, nurture ourselves, rebuild connections with friends and family, connect with larger community, or otherwise change our life.  It is not a defect or a problem to be sad… sadness is feedback, telling us that something is out of balance and gently nudging us to rebalance our lives.

And that takes action, yes, but also and most importantly time.

It’s something to remember when I’m feeling the social pressure to “just be happy”.

kendra-bio1

photo credit: w00dy

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