I’ve been called a Pollyanna more than once in my lifetime. Actually, truth be told, this sobriquet has been tossed around too much to describe my optimistic perspective at least a few hundred times. It does chafe a little, but I have learned to try to embrace my “glass is half full” mind-set.
Besides, who decided that the person who sees the glass as half full is somehow a romantic idealist and wears rose colored glasses to avoid dealing with reality? It’s like being told I’m too loud! I’m not loud, I’m enthusiastic!
By the way, does anyone under the age of 40 know who Pollyanna is? She’s a fictional character from a 1913 children’s book by Eleanor Porter. Pollyanna is a young orphan who is sent to live with her rigid, authoritarian spinster aunt in a fictional Vermont town.
Pollyanna’s secret weapon is the game she plays with herself that her father taught her. “The Glad Game” consists of finding something to be glad about in every situation. Pollyanna shares her positive philosophy with her aunt and the town. Through her smiles, she transforms the downcast New England town into a pleasant place to be.
If you dust off the old Merriam-Webster, or better yet, ask your Siri friend, the meaning of Pollyanna it says something akin to “a blindly optimistic person,” in adjective form, “unreasonably or illogically optimistic.” It’s this pigeonholing here, the “blindly” and the “illogically”, that tends to irk me sometimes.
Why does Pollyanna’s cordialness and goodwill earn the negative reaction of so many?
Can someone, me for instance, have a natural tendency to look on the proverbial bright side, without being described as being a saccharine good two-shoes or, worse, a nut.
I get it. Most people, myself included, do not want someone to try and cheer them up when feeling sad or despair. I respect that. Sad is sad, grief is grief, and I have had my share, but it only represents another benchmark on the emotional scale of life. But, in my quest for gold, whether in good times or bad, I deflate a little at the negative name-calling.
I have had enough sorrowful experiences in my life to know I don’t have to go I search of them. They arrive as an active ingredient in the human experience. Pain and suffering are part and parcel of simply living.
So, since that irrefutable fact is clearly defined, I set my sights to seize and amass what is good, what is working.
This is my own version of Pollyanna’s game and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The reality is, just like there are tough things going on all around us, there are great things too. What we choose to focus on is solely on our shoulders, choice or habit.
I challenge you to play Pollyanna’s game and collect evidence of positivity,.You will not be inventing this evidence. There are wonderful, good things all around us. From the air we breathe (and we are even more blessed because of where we live), the full moon rising over Kenneday Peak, the song of the Meadowlark, the food we eat, the hugs we get –the good, the “glad” stuff. It is all there.
So call me a Pollyanna. From now on I will choose to see this as only the ultimate compliment.
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