Reading the Sunday papers whilst in bed recovering from flu. I was struck by the number of articles and bits of advice about how to think your way to better health, more wealth, greater success, weight loss, clarity of vision and healing all of society's ills.
For the past few years as we have all delved deeper and deeper into Eastern philosophies and New Age behaviours it has become quite fashionable for all of us to think positive.We are encouraged to put a positive spin on everything so that we are responsible for all our illnesses and all our cures. It isn't just in the field of medicine that this school of positive thinking has taken hold. It is also now an integral part of career and personal development. Think yourself well, visualise yourself climbing the staircase to success, meditate your way to paradise and chant your way to wealth and health.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. I have taught courses on Manifesting Results and believe that it is better to have a picture, an image of a successful self. Certainly I agree that we have to take responsibility for ourselves and our actions. It makes it easier to take control of our lives when we can add ourselves to the future scenarios, but to assume that if those same scenarios don't happen it is entirely down to you (or me), I'm just not sure. Doesn't this assume that there are no other forces at work in the world, that we are the one and only force that impacts on our lives? Are we really a super human all-powerful tsunami?
A recent book "Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World" by Barbara Ehrenreich is the first book I've come across that questions the premise of positive thinking being a universal panacea. Ehrenreich wrote her book in response to having had breast cancer and the pink and positive world she was expected to live in in order to create a curative environment for her cancer to heal. As someone who has had breast cancer, a subsequent mastectomy and a number of connected operations, I empathise with Ehrenreich and her distaste for the angels, fairies, white sandy beaches and chakra openings she was expected to conjure up to help her heal.
I remember well a dear friend who ultimately died from her breast cancer believing herself to have failed when she was told her cancer had spread to her liver and bones.
"I guess I just never really visualised well enough, I was always too negative."
How very sad that we live in a world where it is easier to blame the sick person for first creating their disease and then for failing to heal it. It's easier to do that than to examine the real world we are creating, a world of pollution, poverty, poor diet and obesity. It certainly lets everyone else off the hook when diseases like cancer can be blamed on the individual. It even means that money for research and proper treatment can be reduced since it's the fault of the patient if they have the disease and their fault for not healing it. Funny how we rarely blame someone for creating food poisoning or swine flu through negative thinking.
When I did a google search for the power of positive anger I got only one direct reference. All the other references were about how to turn anger into positive thinking. I really believe that it is high time we were more indignant, more demanding and angry. I don't advocate violence but with regard to adequate health care and treatment we need to stop buying into the idea that we created the disease and we are the only ones who can heal ourselves and let everyone and everything else absolve themselves of their responsibilities with regard to providing healthcare for all who need it. It is generally illness and disease that we do not have medical cures for that we expect positivity to work wonders. Agasin, we can blame the negative thinking sick person. It makes us feel less impotent in the face of the unknown.
The dictionaries I consulted all link indignation with righteous, worthy anger. There is also an important link to the word dignity. I faced my cancer without many butterflies, pink ribbons, angels or incense. I did get angry a lot (not a surprise to those who know me) and researched every aspect of my treatment and did what was necessary and demanded more information and better care. My breast cancer was 18 years ago. It has not returned. I acknowledge with clear- eyed reality all the people and things that made my recovery easier and am grateful to the doctors who removed the cancer.
Sometimes things are down to chance. How we think about things is down to choice, but don't let the choices available to people require rose-coloured glasses and stop blaming people for dying. Life is tough enough.
Monday, 11 January 2010
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Thanks for this. All of us who've suffered serious illness need to sort through all of this. So much is generated by the need to sell copy or sell whatever! Cathie
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