In Defense of Rose-Colored Glasses

I have often been accused of being too positive, too cheery, and too pollyanna-ish. Not surprisingly, I do a hair flip and skip away when facing such criticism (insert laugh here). Seriously, I do an internal check and try to figure out what makes me decide to be happy when the reaction should be anything but.

In RL, I have one of those faces that smiles automatically. I smile when I'm sad and crying even. I even find myself laughing when I cry sometimes - yes, for those of you wondering, you can now OFFICIALLY declare me NUTS. However, since I have had children, though, I have come to realize this is a genetic trait - smiling and being nuts. My oldest son is often in trouble for smiling when he is getting redirected for torturing his younger siblings.

I did a search for cranky, bad mood, negative thinking, and anything else I could think of on Google. I read a few blogs. I tried to get in the skin of someone who chooses this outlook or at least can communicate it well on the web. I dispute my husband's bad moods enough that I simply cannot go there to get into character :) but I have to say I think we make a good yin-yang and he tempers my pollyanna-ish views.

What I found was a whole host of individuals and organizations trying to move out and away from negative thinking. People don't write about staying in bad moods, they publish how to overcome them. I suppose this speaks to the huge industry that is self-help and wellness. It is the ultimate in-search-of-a-happy-ending Hollywood factor that childrens books and movies end with.

Happines is associated most heavily with the left (i.e. logical) side of the brain, while anger is associated with the right (emotional, non-logical) side of the brain. From a Society for Neuroscience article on Bliss and the Brain:

"Furthermore, studies suggest that certain people's ability to see life through rose-colored glasses links to a heightened left-sided brain function. A scrutiny of brain activity indicates that individuals with natural positive dispositions have trumped up activity in the left prefrontal cortex compared with their more negative counterparts. "

In other words, happy people are better able to think logically.
-Creating Passionate Users blog, 4/17/2006

I would like to challenge you, if you are taking the time to read this, to consider the above passage I found in another's blog (Creating Passionate Users), and take the additional effort to follow the link and read up. Being happy makes you HEALTHY. Heck, with my whole family - all 6 of us - battling asthma, the flu, pink eye, you name it I think we are due for a little happiness or maybe a BIG happiness. For those of us in SL who choose to enjoy our pixelated freedoms, why not choose happiness there as well? SL is built around the text communication that takes place between individuals and groups. We talk talk talk talk talk. But when, does one, as a person and as an avitar decide to walk the talk? Easy to say, much, much, much harder to do.

Is a happy ending possible? Can someone REALLY wear rose-colored glasses and survive in the big bad RL and SL worlds? I say yes. If you took the time to read the link I included - I hope you read far enough down the screen to realize that happy people feel bad too, happy people experience sadness and unfortunate experiences, but happy people choose to look at those experiences and process those feelings in a different way.

Ironically, I'm coming full circle here. I ask you to look at the name of my blog (not the typo name, smartass) and think about what it means to be resilient. I have to say... another way to be pollyanna-ish... is to be resilient. It is super hard. It makes you crazy. It is not the way the rest of the world would like you to think. But hey, I never was much for trying to do what the rest of the world wanted me to do anyway.

What'cha Gonna Be When You Grow Up

Some days I try to figure out if I have finished growing up yet. It is hard to be achieve, achieve girl. What the heck, who the heck is that, you ask? First born sure. Parents who believe life can be perfected. Parents who raise you believing anything is possible, and by the way, get going and accomplish it, would ya. I've blogged before about all the blessings in my life - and I'm holding to that. But... in the grand checklist of lifelong to do's, what remains?

Days like this I feel like I have entered that zone where you are in-between stops, in-between goals. Something is coming. Change of some sort. I'm cocooning myself for something that lies ahead. The problem is I just don't know what that is. All I know is I feel like something is unfinished.

Maybe it is just a transition time. Our kids are shifting into an older stage of independence. Far from leaving us, but ready and able to play outside with friends without me hovering and stay up late watching movies on the weekends without me hounding them. My husband has told me I am far too young for a mid-life crisis - so that can't be it ;)

I always grew up knowing what would come next. I knew the goal I was heading out to achieve and did just that to the best of my ability. College, teaching, marriage, kids, house. I've even passed the 20 year high school reunion life marker. I was recently reading a book from my mom, Robert Fulghum's From Beginning to End - The Rituals of Our Lives and in it the author specifically addresses the power of high school reunions.

I was one who didn't go. I thought about it. I connected with a good friend that the reunion invitation reminded me of and then googled a few names. Robert Fulghum writes of how the reunion process - whether participated in publically, or simply visited privately in reflection - is all a very necessary part of life. I found it reassuring that there must be others that only experience reunions through personal reflection. I didn't take the time to dig out my high school yearbook like I had at the 10 year mark. Those that are vivid in my memory don't need me to gaze at their yearbook picture for me to remember how important they were to me. I wonder where they are and wonder if they ever think about me. One in particular I remember wrote a message in my yearbook a year after I graduated because at the time I did graduate he couldn't think of something significant enough to write in exactly then. All he wrote was a simple "Let's see where we are 10 years from now." Ironically. as in all yearbook sentiments, that never happened.

He told me he knew I would make a great teacher. He knew it was in my heart to live and breathe teaching and kids and small towns. He could see me being happy in the same place 10 years from now and that would be enough for me. I can't say he was all that right on all accounts. But he did know one thing - I would be happy and I would live and breathe teaching - if not directly, indirectly through my husband and the aspects of my career that touch teaching. He promised me that day he would go on to be famous and I remember laughing saying if that is the case, I need to have him promise he'll come back and visit my students so they believe me that I really did know a rock n' roll man. I found a clip on YouTube where he drums for Dick Dale. He has gone on to other successes with his own bands - but this is the one moment I remember reading about in the newspaper, seeing his name in print, and knowing he had made it.

Cheers drummer man. The years have treated us both well. What does all this have to do wtih SL? Really nothing. Just the connection I suppose I make to music in my SLife. And the connection to resilience. To get this far in life - on any path - requires resilience.

Discovering a Sense of ReSiLiency

Many have joked about my spelling - and believe me - I have to laugh at it myself! I am always in such a hurry to get my thoughts down - the words pour out of my fingers as they fly across the keyboard and I am left with a hiddddeous mess to decypher. The title of this blog, however, is purposeful.

SL offers me the perfect chance to explore resiliency. SL is the perfect opportunity to see how the human spirit can be resilient. SL is the perfect place to explore who we are, what we might be, what we could imagine, and how we can reinvent ourselves. SL is also the perfect place to reevaluate what is important to us, gravitate toward people we most likely will never ever meet in RL but for some reason SL allowed our paths to cross, and SL reminds us how human we all are.

According to Dictionary.com (Unabridged v 1.1), here is how the root word is defined (and LOL spelled correctly):
re·sil·ience /rɪˈzɪlyəns, -ˈzɪliəns/ –noun
1. the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.
2. ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.
Also, re·sil·ien·cy.
[Origin: 1620–30; Latin resili(éns), prp. of resilīre to spring back, rebound (see resilient) + -ence]