I don’t want to think positively

I start to protest: what to do with the non-positive part of my personality? With emotions of resentment, anger, hostility, hatred, sadness, sadness? In short, everything in the world of positive thinking that should be rejected, hidden or corrected? It’s also me. And that’s a lot of me. So much of me being asked to correct and reject?

Once in one of the offices I saw a man-made sign “Have you come to work? Smile. Can’t smile? Go home, ”and completely approved of her. Indeed, it really interferes when a colleague begins to bring his personal attitude to this into Scylla and Charybdis of working disasters.

“But when, in fact, is it allowed to be not positive, when is it allowed to sob and break down?” I asked myself as I walked out of the office onto the embankment, which was gloomy from a summer thunderstorm. On the way home or to work — no, it will not work, otherwise I will get into an accident. It’s definitely impossible at home, you can’t bring work problems home, we all know this. Before going to bed — yes, well, such a pleasant moment to spoil. In the morning — yes, for nothing, and so stress, there is always not enough time to get ready and without any worries.

But when is the right time for a Bach chaconne? Or outrage from Pink Floy’s «The Wall» album? And if I want to reread Brodsky “This is a cat, this is a mouse, this is a camp, this is a tower, this is time on the sly killing mom and dad,” then for this you can violate the principles of “positive thinking” or you will have to wait for a convenient moment when it is allowed to be offended? And by the way — who is allowed?

I don’t want to live in a world where I can only get approval when I think positively. It’s only half of my «I». And sometimes, during my depression, maybe only 10% of my «I».

Once I listened to the Russian writer Linor Goralik, and she said that over time she learned to appreciate her depressive periods, to be grateful to them. It was difficult for me then to understand and believe it, but then, finding myself in almost the same position, I realized that “negative thinking” gives the perception of life that richness and that volume that it would be deprived of with only “positive thinking” .

Most of the art rests on events that are not at all positive, remember at least Van Gon’s self-portrait with his ear cut off. If he had thought positively, he would have painted, at best, a self-portrait with two ears against the background of flowering water lilies. Well, it would probably be beautiful, but it wouldn’t touch the soul like the cry of a suffering person who feels pain to the point that he had to cut off part of his body in order to talk about it.

However, I am more concerned about the richness of my own emotional world. My sister says to me: “Come on, these gloomy thoughts!” And I told her: “Let’s sit quietly and look into ourselves. How does bitter bitterness differ from bitter rage: these are different feelings, right? Each of them is valuable to me, as the diversity of the world is valuable.

I love Rembrandt very much, and not only because he is an incomparable subject portrait painter. He often has a dark canvas, and you come closer and you will see how each stroke in this darkness is not like the others. And this is real wealth: is there a fierce bitterness in it? Or bitter rage? Or maybe the sadness of despair? Or hopelessness?

It’s worth spending a lifetime to figure it out. To be sensitive to this spectrum of hard to bear emotions. To recognize them in a friend when she complains about her Scylla and Charybdis. It takes a lot of courage to peer into the black in Rembrandt. And so much courage to face yourself when you can see all the shades of black.