My mom believes there’s a silver lining

This month’s IndieWeb Carnival is hosted by Joe who invited us to write about affirmations:

“Affirmations” are sayings or slogans I say to myself which represent ideas or feelings I want to reinforce in myself.

I don’t really do affirmations myself. The way they are usually described (as in the quote above) makes me feel they are about trying to convince yourself of something that isn’t true. That has always felt real weird to me in the same way as many other similar practices like many of those in religions.

Recently I’ve been reading Nate Zinsser’s The Confident Mind and that book is big on affirmations. So much so that it’s been bit of a struggle to get through the book as it promotes a lot of practices where you should be thinking and believing that you’re much more capable and competent than you are. I believe the world would be a lot better place if instead we’d have people with more humility and compassion. But that’s another story.

What I really wanted to write about today kind of relates to affirmations. All through my life growing up and later disguising as a functional adult, my lovely mother (hi mom!) has had almost unwavering confidence that we can always find the silver lining in things. (I’m writing about day to day stuff here, not so much the recent rise in fascism or the looming threat of the war…)

Whenever as a kid I’d come home from school after I had a bad day, she’d talk me through and help me see the positive things that I had hidden behind the negative clouds. Or as an adult, when life and work kept kicking me in the head as it so often feels like doing, she’d do her best to help me see it’s not all that bad.

As much as I wished I’d be able to share her positive look on life, I haven’t been able to reach the same conviction. I enjoy the good things to the fullest but I also mull over on the negative experiences and most days and weeks are in either extreme.

I would love to learn even a small fraction of the way my mom reacts to things. Maybe that would lessen the burden the negative experiences have on me and I could stress out about life a little less.

(Btw, I really loved this post by Sophia where they display affirmations as mathematical equations.)