“It’s All Such Bullshit!”
In defense of positive thinking
Hardly one in ten thousand will have the
strength of mind to ask himself seriously
and earnestly — is that true?
— Arthur Schopenhauer, “Religion: A Dialogue”
I have never thought positively by nature. Growing up in the 1970s, I used to suffer bouts of stomach cramps on Sunday nights in anticipation of school the next day. Hostile teachers, threatening classmates, botched assignments: my mind saw phantoms everywhere.
In hope of guidance, I sometimes gazed up at an inspirational poem on a blacklight poster hanging in my big sister’s bedroom. The words, etched in velour, glowed three-dimensionally under the luminescence of a colored bulb (and sometimes with the aid of pot smoke). I memorized each one:
Forget Yesterday.
I am where I am.
I know where I could have been,
had I done what I did not do.
Tell me, Friend, what can I do Today,
to be where I want to be
Tomorrow?
I could never track down the poet, identified only by the tagline “Sigrad.” The furthest I got was determining that the Nordic-sounding name was…
