Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Thinking Positively



I’ve just finished reading Jane Clifton’s cover story in the Listener ‘Down with Positivity’. The article is about Barbara Ehrenreich’s research on the American experience detailed in her book ‘Smile or Die: how positive thinking fooled America and the world.

Can you extend your life by being happy? Is a cheerful outlook what is required to live a
long life? Interesting stuff, and don’t we all know some cranky old curmudgeon who led their family a not so merry dance, died at 93 and everyone said ‘good riddance’, whilst the person we adored snuffed it all too soon and left the their community shaking their heads and wondering about the existence of a just God. 

Will sheer optimism and doing generous deeds attract great rewards and financial success? We’ve all watched as integrity free bankers rob their clients and institutions, spending up large on themselves whilst those who work tirelessly in the community have a 1000 to one chance of being the recipient of ‘Mucking In.’ 

And what about the current economic climate? We’ve all done our own version of trying to be hopeful whilst the electricity bill eats up the last of the tiny redundancy payout. ‘It’ll all work out, it’s fine’ we say as we thumb through the recipe books looking for a new way to feed a family of four on ten dollars, ‘I love trying out new recipes.’ Meatless and fatless, it’s a whole new diet plan. Just like in the war!

This has given me pause to think about honesty. A friend said yesterday that she admires the way I ‘put it all out there on my blog and say what I’m feeling.’ I don’t you know, if I did you’d all be shocked. You’d think I’d lost the plot or had a turn. You wouldn’t be happy. Or would you?

I follow a blog ‘Flux Capacitor’ by Maggie May Ethridge; her strap line is: "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open " M.H. She’s a novelist, poet and mother living in the States and she tells it like it is. There’s no marketing ploy or adverts. She has 470 followers. I’m not sure I could put it all out there like Maggie May.

My husband knows the truth of me, my children think they know more than they do. My sisters know all and tell me when I’m being a pain in the arse Pollyanna and my closest girlfriends drink wine with me and keep my secrets (well at least I hope they do!). The closest I got to really telling it how it is was when we were living in Bristol in 2001 and I was still writing for Next. I sent poems and pictures back to New Zealand and a long time fan said ‘I think they should be more uplifting.’ But when you are hiding from the world under a table in the garden crying so hard your head is buzzing, with your children urging you to come out and your husband at a complete loss, well, to conjure up chirpy verse is a little difficult. I couldn’t make New Zealand readers feel better about things when my own small world was emotional rubble.

I started this blog as a way to re-show my old Next Magazine poems and illustrations, which were a fair summation of my life at the time I wrote them; the nearest I’ve got to being completely honest about my thoughts and feelings in print. Perhaps that’s why people liked them so much and the column ran for 8 years. In a poem you can say what you are feeling and no-one will pull you up on it in the same way they might for an opinionated blog post. I’m not sure why, because both of them are honest; is it because one is a form of art?

Here’s the last poem I wrote from Bristol late in 2002. It probably won’t make you chuckle, but then, I was just being truthful. 

Rue Britannia

Every morning on the way to work,
I pass a homeless guy,
He sits beside the cash machine
And looks at passers by.

He has a worn out sleeping bag
Pulled up around his knees
There’s resignation in his voice
With every ‘Money please?’

And on every tube in London
There roams an immigrant
To shake a tin at passengers
And tote a small infant.

When I first came to England
I was shocked by what I saw
The streets are full of beggars;
They’re dirty and they’re poor.

But the thing that really gets me
Is now I find myself unmoved
At the sight of broken spirits
Lacking shelter, warmth and food.

Grafting in the U.K
Makes you steely and immune
It’s not a lovely attribute;
I’m glad I’m going soon.


8 comments:

TK Roxborogh said...

I love you Fifi.
Tania

Melinda Szymanik said...

it would all sag so horribly if I let it all hang out...

Love this post Fifi.

From a big fan...

Mary McCallum said...

Ups to you buddy - your honesty is good for us all. And don't you find in the writing of the stuff you feel - whether in prose or poetry - there's a kind of working out of the feelings as in 'letting them out' rather than bottling, and in 'working them through' to a point of some sort of resolution? I found the movie 'What the Beep do you know?' enlightening - its thesis is that positive thinking does have an effect and there is scientific evidence of that. I'm hanging onto that. It's the car-parking syndrome - some, like me, believe you'll always find a park, and they nearly always do (even if it takes four times round the block), while others believe they won't, and don't. Go figure...

Karen Jones Gowen said...

Fifi, I have an award for you at my blog today. Come by and pick it up when you get the chance!

Fifi Colston said...

hey thanks everyone- I should be honest more often!

Mike Bodnar said...

Isn't it only artists and poets who can be honest? Isn't that what makes them artists and poets in the first place? Maybe the rest of us are all fraudsters, too afraid - or without the chance - to fess up. Good on you girl.

Beattie's Book Blog said...

Great post Fifi.x

Maureen said...

Hi Ya,
You are world class and NZ is the richer for your work!