Pollyanna

I've been told I have a little Pollyanna in me so I went searching for the book.  It is an old children's book written by Eleanor H. Porter.  There are a couple of movies made from the book as well.

The story is of a little girl who has had a pretty rough life.  She lost both of her parents and gets sent to live with an aunt she has never met who at least at first, doesn't really want her but feels it is her duty to take her in.

Before her father died, he taught Pollyanna to play the glad game where they look for something good in everything.  It started one year when she really wanted a doll but the local aid society gave her crutches instead.  Her dad helped her realize she can be glad she doesn't need crutches.  

When she comes to live in her aunt's town, she gets to know just about everyone who lives there and starts sharing the game with them all.  This has quite an effect on the town.  So much so that when something really bad happens to Pollyanna, a steady stream of visitors shows up at her aunts house sharing all the things they are glad of.

This overarching goal of always looking for the good and finding the beauty in life is really ingrained in me.  I think back to that incredibly beautiful poetry noticing the artistry of the world around me that I wrote in that journal I found recently during one of the darkest times of my life.  And I can't help but reflect back on the little girl who used to sit on "Mucky Island" and daydream.  Later I should look through my poetry binders and see if any of my poems go back that far.  And I wonder if the pink journal I wrote in as a child made it into my keepsakes tub.  I don't remember the time frame of that journal.  But I fully expect to find some beautiful writings from that time period as well.

Was I born this way?  Was it a coping skill I developed early on?  A little of both?  When faced with adversity some people turn to anger and bitterness and some people hang onto whatever positive they can find.  What makes some people go one direction and others go the other?

As I read the book, I did see myself in Pollyanna yet it rubbed me wrong at times when her glad game came across as dismissive.  I suppose the fictional book exaggerated the premise to encourage that positive outlook in children but looking for the positive needs to happen alongside letting myself feel the range of emotions I am feeling.  

That journal I found from 2013-2016 demonstrated that beautifully with regard to the chronic pain I was struggling with.  The joy I was searching out didn't replace the pain I was experiencing.  There are plenty of entries lamenting my struggles.  But the joy made the pain more bearable.  

That said, I didn't demonstrate that so well when it came to my marriage.  I used the joy to escape the feelings I didn't want to admit about my relationship with my now ex-husband.  The positive I hung onto in that regard was really dismissive of what I was really going through.

One other thing that bothered me about the book was the way the little girl's glad game unrealistically changed everyone she came into contact with.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way in real life.  I don't mean to say that joy can't be contagious because it is among people who are open to it.  But there are plenty of people in this world that are so stuck in their misery that they see joy as a threat.

Idealistic me in my twenties believed my positive outlook would rub off on my now ex-husband.  It never did.  I actually think he got more negative as the years went by.  My joy was a threat to his misery and he hung on tightly to that misery.  I can think of countless examples where he actually tried to interfere with my joy.

I'm glad I have some Pollyanna in me.  It makes my life so much more beautiful.  But I'm also glad I've gained some wisdom to lean into it in realistic ways that counter life's challenges without burying the negative.