even when it hurts
I haven't read the book, but there's a quote from The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson that people keep sending me:
"Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience.”
The people who send me this quote do so because they know I'm a widow.
Four years ago, my spouse died in a motorcycle accident. One moment we were riding along the road on a beautiful spring day; the next-
...actually, I don't remember the next; I don't remember the accident or anything from the half-hour or so before it. I do know my spouse died instantly; I was severely injured and spent the next six months learning how to walk again.
The people who send me this pithy bit of wisdom mean well, just like the people who send me flowery cards with meaningless cursive sentiments on them. Nobody knows what to do in the face of massive loss, so everyone does something dumb and pointless. I appreciate them. They're trying.
I don't even mind that people send me this quote in particular. After applying it for several years, I've found it to work more often than not, with one major caveat:
We have to let go of our judgments about "negative" and "positive."
Here's what I mean.
Wanting "positive experience" - or anything - is a "negative experience" because it focuses on our lack. Like "should," it describes and foregrounds a world that does not currently exist. Cool, you imagined a possibility - but that possibility isn't here, now, and here, now is the only place and time you have any hope of influencing.
Yet embracing "negative experience" doesn't magically resolve conflicts. It doesn't turn your mood into sunshine and rainbows. It doesn't automatically give you the total control or influence you need to solve a problem.
Some problems - like the fact that my life partner is Gone - cannot be fixed. By anyone. Ever. An entire unique human being, whom I dearly loved, is gone. Full stop.
When I "embrace negative experience" by acknowledging my feelings - I'm sad, I'm lonely, I miss you, I feel alone - I don't suddenly not have those feelings. Grief is an extension of love; to stop feeling grief, I would have to stop loving, and that is unacceptable. Nor do I suddenly experience those feelings as having some greater meaning - teaching me "the value of love" or "the joy of patience" or somesuch other greeting-card nonsense. I don't suddenly become someone who doesn't experience heavy human feelings. I don't suddenly become less human.
Usually, what I do experience is less distress that the heavy feelings are present. I struggle less. In essence, I take my two problems - my grief and my feelings about my grief - and I eliminate the second problem.
Is having one problem instead of two a "positive experience"? It's certainly a less onerous one.
In the face of the heaviest human problems, "less onerous" is sometimes the best we can get. Sometimes, the most "positive" thing we can do is be with our feelings. Acknowledge them. Let them flow. Affirm them.
That's not a quick fix, but it's the best I've got.
This post was written for the February 2025 IndieWeb Carnival