I hated trying to climb the rope in gym class. I don't know if it is a requirement anymore. For the uninitiated, it was one long rope that hung from the ceiling and you were supposed to climb it to the top.
I couldn't do it and it became the most humiliating gym class activity I had to endure.
When it came to swimming and horseback riding, I was coordinated. And Chinese jump rope. I was good at that.
I never mastered the ropes. As I got older, I learned to dread the hurdles. Being short didn't help me win the battle with those, either. Running AND jumping over something that is waist high? Fahgettaboutit. That is when I would silently beg the gym teacher to just give up on me. This was my fear each time.
Recently I played a card game in a meeting at work. The deck contained what are considered positive attributes. You had to decide if the card you picked was part of who you are. If not, explain why not and then give it to someone else in your group that you think it better describes. One of the cards I picked had "Optimist" written on it. I braced myself for the responses I was going to get when I tried to explain why that card didn't fit me.
"This card doesn't describe me because I am not an optimist." There were a few frowns, a few intakes of breath, and a few concerned looks. I plowed on. "I am a realist." Now I heard a couple of "Ohhhs" and saw a few nods, and still a few concerned looks.
"What this means is if there is a situation, (I pointed at the table) I look at the facts and work through it (I drew an invisible straight line and stopped.) Of course I am hoping for the best outcome, but if I am ignoring the things that happen along the way, (I pointed along the invisible straight line) I may never get to the end successfully."
What I was trying to say was that stating that everything is fantastic and going to work out won't make it so. I know that flies in the face of what we've been taught by authors, lecturers, and preachers but I don't care. They aren't magic.
Please see below an excerpt from a Scientific American article written by Michael Shermer entitled "Kool-Aid Psychology: Realism versus Optimism":
Isn’t positive thinking better than negative thinking? All other things being equal, sure, but the alternative to being either an optimist or a pessimist is to be a realist. “Human intellectual progress, such as it has been, results from our long struggle to see things ‘as they are,’ or in the most universally comprehensible way, and not as projections of our own emotions,” Ehrenreich concludes. “What we call the Enlightenment and hold on to only tenuously, by our fingernails, is the slow-dawning understanding that the world is unfolding according to its own inner algorithms of cause and effect, probability and chance, without any regard for human feelings.”
I don't walk around like Eeyore expecting the worst to happen. I do my best and hope for the brightest outcome possible.No amount of wishing or speaking positively was going to get me up the ropes or over the hurdles. The definition of realism is the attitude or practice of accepting a situation as it is and being prepared to deal with it accordingly.
A few weeks ago someone said I was a survivor. My path hasn't been an easy one but I never gave up or stopped trying. Knowing one's strengths, limitations, and the fact that the world will do as it pleases is not being negative. Looking down the road and determining the what ifs is being prepared. I can hope and I can wish but I must look reality in the eye and deal with it.
