Believing in life's goodness
About the first book I read this year
A book I read recently that I found more helpful and encouraging than I expected to find it was Aggressively Happy, by Joy Marie Clarkson. I am not at all a fan of toxic positivity, as often people attempting to maintain that facade have closet problems, but this book is not about toxic positivity. The subtitle is A Realist’s Guide to Believing in the Goodness of Life, and its essentially a guide to living a good life.
One chapter and idea I particularly appreciated is called Flounder Well. We all have periods in life where we flounder, when the path we might have thought we were on is lost and we don’t then know where we’re going or what we’re doing. One great suggestion for how to view these periods in life came from improv theatre, where in order for it to work well, you have to accept and embrace the scene given to you, no matter how ludicrous, and then act and build on it from there. If you can’t work with the scenario presented to you, the theatre fails. It’s about saying “yes, and”. Only once you’ve said yes to what is, to the reality of your life, can you add the “and”. A quote:
“YES. We may not like the scene (or life) in which we find ourselves, but we have to accept it for what it is … We all find ourselves in stories that are not entirely of our own making. If we ruled the world, there are aspects of our stories we would not have included: personal flaws, setbacks, difficult family members, emotional wounds, financial problems, romantic disappointments. But there they are, rampaging through our lives … Accepting life, with all its warts and wounds included, does not mean surrender, or even approval of its brokenness; it simply means grappling with life as it is, with no illusions.
AND. Once we have accepted our lives as they are, regrets and radiances alike, we can begin to shape our stories. Only when we see life with clear eyes and stubborn acceptance can we add our “and” to life. We can make something of this story, this life, with all its limitations and setbacks, weird characters, and unspectacular settings …”
The chapter includes a poem by Malcolm Guide, which also won me over (a singing bowl is a Chinese instrument, which slowly makes music by running a wooden dowel around the edge):
Begin the song exactly where you are,
Remain within the world of which you’re made.
Call nothing common in the earth or air,
Accept it all and let it be for good.
Start with the very breath you breathe in now,
This moment’s pulse, this rhythm in your blood
And listen to it, ringing soft and low.
Stay with the music, words will come in time.
Slow down your breathing. Keep it deep and slow.
Become an open singing-bowl, whose chime
Is richness rising out of emptiness,
And timelessness resounding into time.
And when the heart is full of quietness
Begin the song exactly where you are.
~Malcolm Suite
The chapter then has some practical tips for floundering well. One is, ‘become the most interesting person in the room’ - by developing some of the skills and talents that every person has latent in them, and thinking about ways to grow areas of your humanity, such as: emotionally and socially; intellectually; spiritually, physically and practically. Another is a fun riff on a line from Sufjan Stevens, which is, ‘don’t be a total mess’. Something to aim for! :) This is about simply being an adult and taking responsibility for your life, but also finding pleasure in it. I’m working on a little bit more orderliness in some areas of my life for 2024! And also taking more time to truly rest and find pleasure at some point on weekends.
Another chapter I found helpful was called Enjoy things unironically - which perhaps describes me at the moment just being ridiculous about cats. To give you the rationale on this one:
“… the forces that make enjoying or admitting you enjoy things so fraught and complicated are the same ones that corrode your ability to form deep friendships, to believe in good things, and to admit with no hesitation that being alive is a good thing. It is my contention that the spiritual and emotional muscles we exercise in thoroughly and full-heartedly enjoying innocent pleasures are at the heart of living a good and meaningful life. To enjoy things unironically can be a small act of resistance to the soul-deadening forces of the modern world and can have profound spiritual repercussions.
…
“In all our efforts to save the world, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that it is a world worth saving … I am convinced that the joy and goodness of the world are more fundamental than its brokenness.”
And just for one more, I especially loved the chapter on Tell yourself a good story. I have to admit that, while I am a lover of stories, the story I tell myself about my life, and about who I have become as a person, is a very bad one mostly - and this can very much affect how we live and perceive what happens to us.
“The stories we tell are not objective; they “make something” of our experiences, inclining us to notice some things and filter others out. The way we tell our stories gives our experiences a particular atmosphere, makes us think of ourselves as particular kinds of people. We tell ourselves stories to give our days, our years, and our lives a narrative arc. Narrative helps us string together the disparate experiences of our lives into a coherent whole. Stories are all about meaning, helping us to place particular moments in the context of our other experiences so we can understand them. Stories give us a sense of why things happened, and what might happen in the future …”
So, those are some of the reasons why this was a good book to read at the start of a new year.
Image 1 by Pexels from Pixabay
Image 2 by michael podger on Unsplash