When I was about 5 or 6, I remember going to the cinema to see the Disney film Pollyanna, starring Hayley Mills in the title role. I loved the movie, as did my mother. And from that point on, my mother often referred to me as Pollyanna. I have often wondered if the movie influenced my personality, or was I a Pollyanna before I saw the film? Going with my mother's comments about my personality from birth onwards, I think the attribute was in me long before I knew what or who Pollyanna is.
For anyone unfamiliar with the term "Pollyanna," I was surprised when looking it up that it is categorised as a "syndrome" now. (When did every facet of personality become a syndrome?) The definition of a Pollyanna personality is someone who is stubbornly optimistic and always looks for the bright side in every situation. A family member once commented that anyone with that sort of personality was doomed to disappointment. I wholly disagree. If you look for the positive, in most cases, you can find it. I'd rather be a Pollyanna than a cynical pessimist. Imagine always going around expecting the worse! Not the way I would want to live my life.
The being said, I have lost some of my Pollyanna since Chris died. There was no positive spin I could try to put on the situation of his cancer returning and his dying within a year of that news. Nothing will ever be okay with that. And that's where my Pollyanna became jaded. The thing is, it has now been long enough that I don't feel the abject pain of grief everyday. I need to find positivity again. I'm working hard to do that. For me to abandon my Pollyanna outlook on life would mean that cancer took two lives, not one. That the essence of who I am and how I have lived my life has been a complete lie and I don't have the capacity to see good in all things. Some things have no good; we have to accept that. But we also have to accept that we can rise, like a phoenix, out of the ashes of despair and sadness, and find happiness and purpose again. By simply writing this blog, I am doing just that. I am slowly rising from the ashes and declaring to the world that I will look, once again, for the happiness and joy that can be found every single day, all around us, as long as we are willing to look for it and acknowledge it when we find it.
Optimism and grief can co-exist. I can look back on my years with Chris and find nothing but incredible joy and happiness. That is what I need to do, to concentrate on what I had, not on what I lost. To focus on the goodness around me. Pollyanna, I will find you again; I will survive with more than just my existence, but with the mindset that served me so well for so long.
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If there was ever a cheerful flower, it has to be the daisy. I love this photograph Chris took of a quartet of daisies amongst the green grass. This photograph is called "She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not..."
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