No one’s supposed to feel sad. Everyone should smile, even when their worlds are on fire. Welcome to the disturbing world of toxic positivity
Avoiding negative thoughts has created poisonous mindsets. We live in a world that is oversensitive to anything negative. Disagree with me, and you’re negative, hence toxic, hence to be ghosted. Illustration by C Y Gopinath using Midjourney
In July 2016, I finished all my money. I’ve never been particularly good with savings, a trait that has helped me less and less as I grew older. When I went bust, my balance was zero in every bank account.
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I was overdrawn, overextended, unemployed, overdue—and overwrought. There was no work, temporary or full-time, in the offing. Meanwhile, I had to pay rent, feed a family of four, pay tuition for two children at one of Bangkok’s most expensive schools, while somehow fooling everyone into thinking my life was very cool.
During this trying period, the most useless words I heard were, “Everything happens for a reason.” The odd thing was how reassuring they sounded when I heard them. Instantly, my terrible poverty was not a random lightning bolt of fate. It had a reason, only I did not yet know what that reason was. All was going according to plan. Someone’s plan.
Positivity, optimism and 24/7 happiness are all over the internet. The worse the planet gets, the more pandemics ravage us, the more wars break out, the more wild weather savages our lives, the more children are trafficked, the more women are raped, the more the rich get richer, the more those in power enrich themselves—the more we are exhorted to look upon the bright side, find a silver lining, be happy.
But what possible reason could there be for the mindless gang rape of a young woman in a field in Manipur? Or the killing of numberless schoolchildren by gun-wielding students in the USA? In a world riven with trauma, dysfunction, chronic pain, racism, sexism and pointless violence, why should anyone pretend there is some benign plan or deeper wisdom?
Are we really better off telling ourselves that living hells happen for a reason? Is it wrong to be down and blue sometimes, feel grief and pain, even lock the door sometimes and cry into a pillow? Can forced positivity actually be bad for you?
It’s called toxic positivity and it’s part of today’s internet psychobabble. Growing psychological evidence says that dismissing difficult but real emotions can be harmful and damaging in the long run.
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According to The Psychology Group, “With toxic positivity, negative emotions are seen as inherently bad. Instead, positivity and happiness are compulsively pushed, and authentic human emotional experiences are denied, minimised, or invalidated.”
Dig deeper. I did, and connections began to emerge between positive thinking and the Law of Attraction, the American solution, rooted in magical thinking, to becoming super-rich super-quick. The immensely popular philosophy, propounded by Eckhart Tolle, says that if you strongly visualise a positive, happy, wealthy future for yourself, it will manifest itself. Your dreams will come true.
Societies groomed to seek wealth and pursue happiness loved it. Thinking positive meant you could get rich without doing the heavy lifting. Books promoted positive thinking and doctors prescribed it for boosting immunity, curing incurable diseases, making marriages work and having a better night’s sleep. The formula was simple—avoid negative thoughts and embrace positivity.
Today that has created delusional, poisonous mindsets. We live in a world that is oversensitive to anything negative. Disagree with me, and you’re negative, hence toxic, hence to be ghosted. Tell me to try harder, implying that I’m not trying hard enough, and you’re toxic and negative. Off with my head!
But Bill Gates and Aziz Premji did not become billionaires by dreaming hard about it. Believing rain clouds don’t exist won’t stop the thunderstorm.
I am reminded of the dwarves in the Gemini Circus, where I worked for a spell as a clown when I was 21. Word leaked out that the new joker knew how to write and pretty soon a line had formed outside my tent, of circus performers who wanted to dictate letters home to their loved ones. Through their words, I got heartbreaking glimpses into bleak circus lives where random, senseless and chronic tragedy was the norm.
But no one in the circus ever reassured anyone that everything happened for a reason. No one cheered up anyone else. Ask a circus worker how life goes and they’ll respond with a phrase borrowed from the perilous act of the flying trapeze. If one of those high-flyers should miss and fall, they would not go straight down but be flung several hundred feet sideways. Death was almost guaranteed.
Protection came in the form of a large net below. With any luck, it would catch the unlucky trapeze artist who missed their relay and plunged down. The circus response to How’s life? captures the inevitability of loss, sorrow, misfortune and risk in life, but also offers a mix of hope and gratitude.
“It’s all right. I’m still falling in the net.”
The next time that things go from bad or worse, don’t put on a happy mask. Stay in the despair and grief, and dig dig dig for the lessons you can learn from it.
Above all, do try to keep falling in the net.
You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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