The circumstances of 2020 have brought us many new buzzwords: unprecedented, adaptive pause, pivot, and, my favorite, toxic positivity. As a self-described pessimist, I am absolutely fascinated by toxic positivity. According to The Psychology Group, “We define toxic positivity as the excessive and ineffective overgeneralization of a happy, optimistic state across all situations. The process of toxic positivity results in the denial, minimization, and invalidation of the authentic human emotional experience.” (2019). This seems to be the idea that it is painful and destructive to counsel or support or collaborate with people going through difficult challenges with platitudes. For example, when a friend is in crisis, it can be less-than-helpful to say, “look on the bright side”, or “be grateful for what you have”. To this new idea of toxic positivity, I want to say, “Well, duh…”
From my personal experience, I know that when a person is experiencing grief, pain, loss, or despair, exhorting them to “cheer up” and “make the best of it” is just dumb. When my father died after enduring cancer treatments for years, there were a few well-meaning people who said things like, “He is at peace now”. Not helpful. That man was at peace every day of his well-lived, well-loved life. I missed my father. My soul cried out against the idea of a world without him. My heart hurt--literally. I could point to the place in my chest where my grief lived. It still has a home there, after fifteen years. If I had tried to put on a happy face, I would have never healed. Instead, my wise Uncle Dan (an Episcopal priest) gave me some of the best pastoral advice I’ve ever received, “Linda, sometimes, things just suck.”
I needed to be allowed to let things suck for just a little while. Not to wallow, but to feel and explore the pain. To dive into the suckiness and swim around a bit. Since then, this simple statement, “Sometimes things just suck” has seen my friends and I through grief and pain many times. When my dear friend’s sister was killed in a car crash, she said, “You know, you’re right, Linda, sometimes things just suck”. When another dear friend’s baby was born stilborn, acknowledging the suckiness of it all was the only comfort I could offer. We acknowledged the pain and sat together while we felt it. Sometimes we need someone to crawl into our hole with us so that we can find our way into the light.
It’s 2020 and let’s be honest: things pretty much suck. We are in a global pandemic, when people are losing their jobs and incomes, and when people are being asked to put their own health at risk to earn their living. Wallowing in self-pity won’t help us. But pretending to be happy about things won’t help either. We need to find a healthy balance of admitting that things do suck and getting on with the important work that lies ahead. As a person who has little patience with pretentiousness and inauthenticity, toxic positivity just isn’t a trap into which I will fall. I tend to lean more towards the “healthy negativity”. It stands to reason that if too much positivity can be toxic, then a certain amount of negativity can be healthy.
Of course we want to celebrate all the hard-working health-care workers, essential labor, educators, and other professionals who are going above and beyond during these challenging times. We call them heroes and we make memes about how hard they work. We tell them they can solve the world’s problems, that “we are in this together”, and that “we can do anything”. We should celebrate them--we need them and we love them. It is natural to want to prop our people up and put on a brave face. However, at the heart of this problem is a very sucky situation. We are in a global pandemic, when people are losing their jobs and incomes, and when people are being asked to put their own health at risk to earn their living.
Sometimes, things just suck. And we get up every day and do our very best. Sometimes, we need to dive right into the suckiness of it and swim around for a while. And, then, we have to go to work. Because, things will always suck from time to time. Life isn’t fair and (many times) it isn’t fun either. But things can get better. We are in this sucky world together. We can do anything when we help our neighbors. We are heroes. So, rather than shielding ourselves with positivity, maybe we could wrap ourselves with healthy realism. That might help us to get down to the work of making things suck just a little bit less.
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