Deep Thoughts or Deep Do-Do?

Are you as tired of positive thinkers as I am? If so read on. If not, I’m begging you to avoid the compulsion to comment below. I already know exactly what you’ll write, oh ye of chipper attitude and eternal vigor, about how much power we all have just by visualizing what we deeply want or how to think our way to eternal health and happiness.

Hey, if negative thinking truly affected our situations as much as it’s purported to, explain why Woody Allen hasn’t yet had a brain tumor after publicly obsessing over it for years. Tell me why my 91 year old mother hasn’t had cancer by now in at least 37 different body parts where she felt sure it must have already grown to the size of a grapefruit. Explain why every dreamer who buys a lottery ticket and sees his fortune before him can be found in line a week later, asking for another one.

All this talk about the power of thought cracks me up most when I think about my paternal grandfather, for some reason. This dude, born in the in the late 1800’s, was a trapper from Kentucky who migrated to Michigan to later marry, farm and raise ten kids in the process. The image of him having the inclination (forget about the time and energy) to meditate on happy thoughts about his wheat crop is an absolute hoot and a half.

I think about all the years I spent scribbling away in some journal about my hopes and dreams and I smile imagining what that cigar chompin’ old geezer would say to his granddaughter “Candy” about how she’d spent her energy back then.

“Jee-sus Kee-RIST!” he’d holler, and recommend I grab a milk bucket, head to the barn and look for the nearest udder.

Ok, yes, I’m intentionally pushing buttons here and not at all suggesting it’s folly to think good thoughts. I do it as much as I can, and hope to continue. It’s just that it’s been taken much too far and way too seriously in this age of motivational speakers, seminars for every aspect of living in this world and most of all, the luxury of time to spend obsessing about our personal emotional climates ad nauseum.

I’ve been with people who are so steeped in the church of positivity, you’d be reprimanded toute suite just for sending back a bowl of soup with a hair floating in it.

“See it as a gift,” they’d likely say and pull out a verse from the latest self-help manual about “acceptance.”

I was on a forum where this topic was being debated and one man posted, “So much of the positive thinking material isolates and even suggests you only communicate with positive thinkers. If we are strong, we need to touch folks who may be weak or struggling, not separate from them.”

I like that perspective. He’s not suggesting we intentionally seek out weak and negative company, draining ourselves trying to help them out. Common sense tells us to avoid that, and the fun factor in everything is not at all a selfish concept to keep as priority #1. Besides, who wants to hang out with a bunch of haters or whiners, unless you find some perverted satisfaction in all that, which some sure seem to.

Ever watched daytime talk shows?

Most folks, though, seem to want to just keep things simple, as much as possible. Avoiding complication is not an easy task, but it sure doesn’t help when the positive police are on our tails after every sentence, saving us from even the slightest notion that sometimes, shit just happens.

K.I.S.S., as that lovely acronym suggests, is indeed doable, though. It’s just that there’s no need to keep some manic appointment each day trying to control our minds in order to feel that beautiful option in life. Kids don’t need to be on guard about their thoughts, not the little ones anyway. Check ‘em out at two or three, completely biased toward joy, defaulted toward fun and doing whatever makes them feel as good as they possibly can.

Did someone have to teach us that back then? Of course not. It’s totally innate. It’s also still alive in us. It’s not like it dies around the age of puberty. We just start getting distracted and instead begin to focus on other aspects of the world around us. We become convinced that our adult responsibilities preclude some basic needs we still have, like the one for a pure experience of how simple things can really be, no matter what our titles and regardless of what duties or challenges face us each and every day.

Big difference between “simple” and “easy,” though. Hell no life ain’t easy, no matter what Chopra or Wayne Dyer might tell us on the latest PBS special.

I heard Chopra say once, “The way you think…can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.”

Hey, not saying the guy is completely full of it, but man, if I really thought I had that much control over my life, I’d be in a state of constant panic with every image that flew through my head. Sorry, I just don’t believe it, Deepak, and sometimes I wonder if you do either.

(It does sell books though. Just sayin’.)

One book that does address this topic in a cool way is Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich. Here’s a clip of her with Jon on the Daily Show making the claim that people can not boost their immune systems or attract wealth with positive thoughts.

“I never think delusion is ok,” says the author, citing the financial crisis as having been caused, in part, by too much optimism; that anyone who said “this won’t work” was tossed out of the banking offices as being way too negative.

So, if you’re still not convinced let’s just make a deal, You don’t talk to me about your daily affirmations and I won’t tell you about the state of my peristalsis. That way we’ll both be happy. Hey, maybe we’ll even add years to our lives!