I’m an Optimist? You’re Kidding!

So, my blog post yesterday, What Mercury Retrograde Really Means, might have seemed a little… cranky.

Half the year is going to suck, people! That was my general message. In an if-we-lovingly-accept-the-vissicitudes-of-life-we-will-actually-be-happier, sort of way.

There was another message in the message, again, assuming that you take Astrology with more than a few grains of salt, or if you are willing to explore the paradigm for just a minute longer…:

Half the year, you might be able to make plans, control outcomes, have your technology and your car and your flight all bend to your will. Half the year, you might not get those things, but during that half, you might get… lovely surprises, incredible coincidences, stronger intuitive hits, inspired discoveries, the joyful adrenaline that comes from sliding, gliding, flying, fleeing, tumbling, the deep satisfaction that comes after you surrender to being forced to give up control.

I was also rather emphatic about taking ourselves off the hook for the suckage. To stop trying so hard to be happy, and stop overly blaming ourselves when we are not (if I just prayed harder, meditated more, ate better, did x, y, or z differently…). Which doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t still brush our teeth and floss our brains, right?

Take cover, under the covers, until the sh*tstorm passes — because this is an empowered response.

This reminds me of my favorite book, back in the 80s, when I was a cranky teenager in high school — Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, by Richard Bach. It had a book within the book, from which I quoted from liberally on my “senior page” in the school yearbook. Here’s the quote:

Perspective — Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you’re forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that.

Remember where you came from, where you’re going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place.

You’re going to die a horrible death, remember. It’s all good training, and you’ll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind.

Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution it not generally understood by less advanced life forms, and they’ll call you crazy.

People didn’t get it. They thought me quite dark.

I also won a very special award that year, at the “senior brunch.” One of those kind of joke-awards that have a very big uncomfortable grain of truth in the center. I won the “Dark Cloud Award” because “Even on a sunny day, Julie has a dark cloud over her head.”

Wow.

Yeah. I had earned that. I was a worrier. Raised by worriers. From a long historical familial line of world class worriers.

But still, part of me was laughing with Richard Bach, or at least suspected I might laugh one day.

Fast forward to this past weekend. Sunday. I’m in a beginning-level Stand-Up Comedy workshop, with six other people. We have an exercise where we have to get in front of the group, one at a time, and the group tries to guess what our “story” is, our inner monologue or attitude, in the face of stress.

Optimistic!

(They shouted, almost uniformly.)

Goes with the flow, takes things in stride…

I was genuinely shocked. I started laughing. HARD. “I am much more neurotic than you all think I am!” I shouted, gleefully.

* * *

Consider this retrograde realization and re-frame:

A lot has changed since 1987. I am much less neurotic than I think I am.

I am much more optimistic, more fun, and more fabulous, than my inner 17-year-old self thinks I am.

(Thank you, therapy, meditation, 12-step, improv theater, marriage, motherhood, coaching, spiritual experiences, personal and professional failures and successes, improved nutrition, exercise, the passage of time, for all of the changes you’ve wrought.)

A few takeaways, as this pertains to dating, and anywhere in our lives that we have to present ourselves, in the hopes of connecting with other humans…

Where might you be wrong about who you are, and how others see you?

Where might you be convincing others that you are less fabulous than you actually are?

And where might you be putting yourself in less-than-appropriate situations because reality and your beliefs about yourself and others are out of sync?

I still love me some misery. A good cry releases awesome endorphins. I still love that Richard Bach quote. And I still stand behind yesterday’s proclamations about learning to love the suckage.

But here’s the other thing.

I’m also an optimist. A black-cloud optimist.

When I was much younger, maybe 9 or 10, I had Snoopy umbrella. It was one of those clear vinyl arc-shaped ones that you could pull down over your head and stand all the way inside of. Around the bottom of it was a cartoon and the phrase:

Every cloud has a silver lining.