positivity!

I have a bunch of scattered thoughts right now, so this post might not be very eloquent or well-put-together... but anyways. It has to do with the "epiphany"!

A lot of the time I do things or think in a way that is not good for me. I kind of have a really bad habit of feeding myself negativity. And when I'm feeling negative, depressed, disappointed, or anxious, the negativity tends to breed more negativity. And that usually leads to some sort of weird existential crisis, and well, nobody ever said those are pleasant.

The other night I watched with my mom for the gazillionth time, the movie Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, based on the book by Rebecca Wells. Since I'm bad at summarizing plots, I'll copy the book summary from amazon. "The Ya-Yas are the wild circle of girls who swirl around the narrator Siddalee's mama, Vivi, whose vivid voice is 'part Scarlett, part Katharine Hepburn, part Tallulah.' The Ya-Yas broke the no-booze rule at the cotillion, skinny-dipped their way to jail in the town water tower, disrupted the Shirley Temple look-alike contest, and bonded for life... Siddalee must repair her busted relationship with Vivi by reading a half-century's worth of letters and clippings contained in the Ya-Ya Sisterhood's packet of 'Divine Secrets.'"

Anyway, my point is, why I like this movie and book is this: the women in it are so damn awesome. They have problems and griefs and sorrows, but they're still full of life and love and are ready to party. They're crazy and hilarious, irreverent and full of spirit. My mom and I also have a connection to the story because it takes place in the crazy depths of Louisiana, where my mom spent half of her childhood.

Back to the main point. I usually feed myself negativity... For instance. If I'm having one of my major days of religious doubt, I go over in my head all the atheist theories and all the negative things I have ever heard about spirituality. If I feel like I'll never amount to anything, will never be able to overcome my fears, and will end up wasting my life - I think about how many people must fail all the time, and tell myself that I'm too shy and afraid to accomplish anything. And I feel like shit!!

Sometimes, however - like after I watched Ya-Ya the other day - I remember positivity. I remember how amazing life can be with the right attitude and fearlessness. I start thinking that maybe, by thinking & acting positively, I can make things good. On a really positive day, I get a feeling that - dare I say - I can make my life the best fucking thing the universe has ever seen.

It also has something to do with what kinds of things I give myself, or let myself indulge in. If I read and think about positive, daring, juicy things like Sera Beak's books about eclectic spirituality, this website's articles, magazines like iCiNG, my favorite books like I Capture the Castle, Thoreau at his loftiest... Whenever I fill my day with things like this, I always feel better, more positive, more bold, more ready to laugh at myself, more ready to embrace & trust the universe and whatever is out there... more confident... more open to possibility... more like I am living rather than floating through the days like a drone. Eager to "wink back at the universe", even talk to strangers!, and be excited about my life.

I am sick of greyness. I am sick of commas trailing off midsentence and question marks hanging everywhere. I want exclamation points! I'm sick of my dull and tired agnosticism, my grey noncommittal attitude toward my life, toward humanity, toward my ambitions. I'm sick of all that crap! No more grey. I want powerful red, bright sky blue, leaf green, pure snow white, rich night sky purple, spunky sunset pink.

Now, the question that comes up is, how to fill my life with positivity without turning into some sort of pink fluffy bunny who thinks that there is no war and lollipops can solve global warming. I can't ignore negative, ugly, bad things because they will still be there and will still need to be dealt with. I'm not sure about a solution for this problem.