Sometimes I still fight having a bad day, despite being an optimist and knowing God’s love for me, and that I’m surrounded by loving people. We need to be honest. Life happens.
I’m so grateful to my colleague, Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins (Senior Pastor of Sunshine Cathedral MCC, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.), who wrote this blog with his confessions. He has given me permission to share this with you this week.
As a progressive Christian, I believe there are many names for God and many ways to a loving God; this article reflects one of those ways. Take from here what works for you. Celebrate life with joy and peace!
Optimism is a choice for me. It isn’t “natural” … that is, I didn’t learn it in my home or school or even in the church of my youth. Because I was already a young adult when I embraced New Thought philosophy (the idea that we can take control of our habitual thinking and thereby improve the conditions of our lives), I had long established/programmed thought habits that fed into anxiety, shame, regret and dread.
As a child and young adult, I worried about almost everything. I saw the world as a challenging place where every good thing and every success could only come by means of struggle. Added to the habitually negative way of viewing the world that I was taught was a family history of depression. I not only “learned” anxiety, in some ways, I biologically inherited it!
Additionally, I was a gay child in a super conservative, fundamentalist Christian region of the country, where fear (fear of God, fear of hell, fear of punishment, fear of not being good enough, fear of gays!) was practically in the water supply … it seemed ubiquitous, natural, normal and inescapable. So feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and low self-esteem all seemed to come naturally to me; those feelings certainly dominated my mind for the first 20 years of life (and have paid unwanted visits from time to time ever since).
But I did discover the idea that there is a universal power that flows through and expresses as all life, that this power is the energy of life, the “stuff” from which we are made, and by changing our thoughts and attitudes and expectations we can tap into that power and direct it more usefully for our benefit (rather than unintentionally using it to reinforce our fears).
So for almost 30 years I have been an avowed optimist. But that doesn’t mean that the first 20 years of programming went away. Some days, I still struggle. My struggles are now aided by the assurance that things will get better, that I deserve for them to get better, and that I have the ability to weather the current storm (real or imagined) and see brighter days again. The struggle doesn’t last as long, or occur as frequently, but it does still happen.
I still have work to do. To this day, when I experience inward turmoil, or outer challenges, a negative voice rises within me accusing me of being a fraud. Those old negative tapes still exist. They are buried, the volume is turned down, but they are still in storage in my subconscious.
Usually, when I feel badly about feeling badly, I am able to remind myself that optimism isn’t a choice I made 30 years ago; it’s a decision that I first made 30 years ago, and it’s a choice I must continue to make daily. When I remind myself of this, I start to forgive myself for being overly critical of myself, and I begin again affirming my value, daring to know that things can, ought to, and must get better, and I start remembering the many things for which I can be grateful. I start to see the good that outweighs the bad, the good that the bad can’t take away, the good that is waiting for me beyond the bad … sometimes, I even notice that the bad isn’t as bad as I first imagined.
I share this because optimism saved my life. It got me through bouts of depression, including the worst bout of my life about five years ago. It also helped me cope with spinal defects, get my weight under control, and even live a healthy life, in spite of a chronic diagnosis, for a couple of decades now. Optimism has helped me survive professional challenges, has made it possible for me to see 22 countries so far, earn multiple degrees, and find and share my life with the true love of my life.
There remains a universal power, we are part of it and it is part of us, and we can use it to improve our lives. We can remind ourselves of this fact as often as we need to, and as we do, things start to get better again. So, I remain an optimist. Some days it takes more effort than others, but I still believe that it’s worth the effort. And so it is.
