positivity can only help if you’re honest

When I first began learning about and practicing manifesting, I remember being intrigued and excited. I remember thinking that I could truly bring anything to life, that if I spoke to my ancestors and believed in a better reality, my life could change. And it did. Truthfully, it really did. But what I was not prepared for was the anxiety that came from expectations. Throughout my journey, I’ve read and heard so many details about how the incorrect mindset could lead to negativity, to the removal of the blessings you’ve brought to yourself. And hearing and seeing those opinions led me to be fearful that if I didn’t maintain an affirmative attitude, I would lose what I had. All the rhetoric of “it can only bother you if you let it” left me feeling as though my sadness, my anxiety, my tough and difficult lessons were a result of my own error, of my own stupidity, of my own weakness and inability to simply ignore what was bothering me.

It’s been a year since we’ve been informed that the world is in a pandemic and despite things slowly getting better, there are still millions of people affected by this virus and thousands dying every day. The reality is that even when the pandemic ends, the virus isn’t going to just disappear and neither is the impact, but when I log onto social media, people seem to be selling a different story — a story that enforces this idea of positivity as a pathway to freedom. But what people that pump positivity in your face with little to no real analysis of reality fail to understand is that positivity is only a pathway to freedom if you’re honest. If being positive about life requires you to ignore and neglect how your reality is impacting you, it’s not a pathway to freedom but a pathway to even more turmoil in the future.

The issue with the hamster wheel for positivity is that it moves you neglect the ways that different aspects of life affect you, such as personal grief, interpersonal misunderstandings, and most prominently anti-Blackness and the various ways it permeates. How can you not let generations of racism, colorism, and communal harm not affect you? What do you gain from ignoring the way you’re being forced into harm? And if positivity is the thing that keeps us centered, and it’s our responsibility to maintain it, where does that leave those that navigate mental illness? Do people with mental illnesses not deserve the beauty of manifesting, of having incredible, beautiful (defined by self) things in life?

Not only is the positivity movement not advisable, but it’s deadly. Positivity and affirmation only move what can be moved. And something that can only be moved by force is not something worth moving.

This is not to say that we can’t be positive or use affirmations as a tool for creating and maintaining lives that make us feel good, but this is to say that before these tools can be useful we must be honest with ourselves. We must look in the mirror and intake the totality of who we are, of what we must be, and of what we desire to be. We have to be honest about which parts we enjoy, and grieve the parts we don’t. We must lovingly choose grieving because it’s this flow of honest emotions that allows us to see what we can be thankful for. And when we don’t feel thankful, when all we feel is dread and despair, we must remind ourselves that our blessings don’t miss us, no matter the circumstances, because they are designed specifically for us. And then continue to let the dread flow as it may. Sometimes, the blessing is that we are alive and I hope on the tough days, that is enough.

It’s easy to be discouraged when you log onto our most accessible way of communicating and witness people deluding us into thinking that positivity will save us. It can’t save us, but what it can do is help us survive. And survival only means something when we choose honesty for ourselves, and for those we love. And if surviving is all we can do, then know that you are doing enough and deserve to be applauded for that, too.

As always, sending as much love as possible.

x,

Simi

Art work by Shefon Taylor. To pay for this brilliant work, please visit this Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/shefon