Optimism
I believe in optimism. I even believe in Eternal Optimism. (OK, maybe not eternal….) I also believe in laughing and playfulness and fun.
It’s not that it always comes easy to me, and in fact, sometimes it is difficult.
When life throws me a really hard ball…you might find me on a Friday night eating cheerios topped with grape jelly convinced that absolutely every other widow and widower, or maybe every human being in the whole United Sates, (no, no, the whole world) are on a fabulous date, in love, laughing it up on some moonlit ski slope, getting ready to go inside where they will link arms, snuggle up and share a snifter the Best Brandy, of course, in front of a roaring fire. And there I am, as cheerios occasionally drop to the floor, listening to NPR and getting more and more depressed over the state of the world.
The wonderful thing about being human is that we get to choose a perspective. The day after a grape cheerios night I will probably again, choose hope and smile at the ridiculousness of my feminine mind.
Our perspectives are not locked in. They are not part of our hard drive, no matter what we might believe. I was taught as a child that the world was unsafe. “What is said here stays here…” My parents lived in Nazi-occupied Holland and they risked death daily. Their world WAS really unsafe.
I can choose differently. I don’t live in war-torn Holland. I live on Cape Cod and other than getting in the car with my 16 year-old behind the wheel, my life is not at risk. My world may feel unsafe at times, but it is not.
I get to have faith in people’s good natures. I get to assume, and it takes work sometimes, but I do get to assume that good happens. To me and to you. It takes less energy. Of course people have occasionally let me down as I have let them down. That is what we do as humans, we make mistakes.
And of course, people die. For a very long time, that was evidence enough that the world was unstable and at any moment a very bad thing could happen.
But after a while, that perspective held me captive. It did not allow healing.
I needed a new one.
It goes something like this…
The people in my life might die before I do. Many will. I will not feel OK for a long while but I know, because I have experienced it, but I also know that I will be OK and I will again experience joy.
Widowhood is so rigorous and long and arduous.
Because of this, we assume that it will never end. We assume that we will be, in our hearts, women in pain for the rest of our lives.
Part of what I do in my work is to move people along, to show them the next place to look, and to help them recognize how far and in what ways they have made progress.
Take a look at your perspective. Is that the perspective you want? Because if it isn’t, don’t assume it is hard wired.
Warmly, Mie Elmhirst
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Coach for Widows
