Attitude Adjustments

I was talking to Kathleen last night and Kathleen is like The World's Best Human or at least a runner-up in the Universal Pageant and she said that she was too tired these days to be happy.
Well, no mystery there. If she's not doing a play AND taking care of her father AND taking care of her dogs AND taking care of her yard AND hosting Garden Club meetings AND making soap AND getting her entire vast Christmas preparations done before December ALL AT THE SAME TIME, she's, well, I don't know.
Oh yeah. Making scarfs for everyone in the world. And hosting Thanksgiving dinner for various family and friends.
So yes, she's tired.
And she's leaving this morning to go down south to take care of a friend who had back surgery whose wife is in the hospital in a coma.
But that's not what I wanted to talk about.
What I wanted to talk about was how she told me that she'd heard a program on NPR about how a "good attitude" in terminally ill patients did not affect the outcome of their disease one iota.
Not one.
Of course, there are plenty of good reasons to have a good attitude. Whatever life you have left (whether you have a disease or not) will be far more pleasant both for you and your friends and family if you have a decent attitude about things. This goes without saying.

BUT- it got me to thinking about how we all spend so much energy and guilt trying to be GRATEFUL every day and all that other Oprah stuff and let's face it- some of us were born with cheerful attitudes and some of us were not. Or else the good attitudes were lost somewhere along the way in early childhood or, well, you know.
And yet we are told over and over again that we should  be Zen-like and even DOG-like in our acceptance of life, ever-cheerful, ever-accepting of whatever life hands us, ever-grateful, ever uber-aware of how good we have it, etc., etc.,  our tails wagging, always ready to jump up and take a walk at any moment, and if we aren't, we probably have a brain-glitch wherein CHEMICALS are involved and we need medication and hey- I'm not arguing with that one- and of course it's nicer to be happy than to be depressed and it feels better but it's gone far beyond that.

It's almost like the old, superstitious dark ages when disease was blamed on demons. Now we don't call them demons, we call them bad emotions that can somehow create disease. I quit believing in that shit when my stepfather, who has feared cancer his entire life and who is FILLED with bad emotions, didn't die at a young age and never got cancer at all but in fact, is still alive at the age of 87 or something like that. 

So what are you saying, Ms. Moon?

Fuck if I know.

No, no. What I'm saying is that we should stop with the anguish and self-blame if we forget that dude with no feet when we're complaining about having no shoes. It doesn't help us one damn bit if we don't have shoes to remember the guy with no feet. DUDE WITH NO FEET DOESN'T NEED SHOES AND WE DO! I've always said that someone else's cancer does not cure our broken leg nor does it make the pain more bearable. Yes, it can put our broken leg in perspective but it really, on a physical level, does not help at all and on an emotional level, can only add to our agony.

And how we handle things, whether good things or bad things, depends on so many different things and feeling guilty that we don't have the right attitude about things just cannot be helpful. Sometimes it is entirely appropriate to feel angry or depressed and would be wrong not to. Some things we cannot be cheered up out of. Some things only time will resolve and there will be much misery and much crying and much sadness before that begins to happen. Some things should not be accepted at all.
I had a friend whose first husband was so horrible and abusive that she had to escape from him, literally escape, and years later, when she was married to a different man who was abusive in different ways, she couldn't help but compare that abuse to what her first husband had done and she stuck with him for years and years until she was almost completely beaten down and dammit, she had a great attitude but I swear, it ended up killing her and before she died, he crept back into her life like the snake he was and the things he did or caused to happen to her were the lowest of the low and even now, when I think of them, I shudder and I want to go find him and cut his head off because the world would be a better place if I did.

Sometimes it's not our attitude that needs changing, it's our circumstances.
Sometimes anger can fuel that change. Yes, acceptance has its place in this world and I'm all for gratefulness- if there is truly reason to be grateful and speaking personally, I have a lot to be grateful for but sometimes, when depression takes me over, that's not enough and the guilt I feel for it NOT being enough only adds another layer of blackness that I have to find my way out of.

Not today. Today I have a GREAT attitude and I'm grateful as all get-out and it's a beautiful day and I have no real obligations but I know without doubt that something will be coming along eventually, whether it is real or perceived that will knock me back and I accept that and I hope that if it is something real, I can do something to change it but if it's just perceived (due to those brain chemicals or whatever) feeling guilty about my fucking attitude is not going to help.

All right. That's what I am thinking about this morning. And if your attitude and mood are lovely today, then enjoy the hell out of it, and if they're not, well, don't feel guilty.
We are humans, not Zen masters. We are humans, not dogs. I am me, not Kathleen. I can admire her from here to eternity, but I will never have the attitude of acceptance and perseverance that she does. Never in my life.
I admire her and I love her but I cannot be her.

I am me. You are you. And no where is it written that we all have to have good attitudes all of the time.

Happy Friday, y'all.
Love...Ms. Moon