My Attitude

I've never been a glass half-full kind of guy.  But I try not to be a glass half-empty type either.  I'm definitely not into positive thinking, and I try my best not to engage in negative thinking.  What I strive to do is to see the world, and my place in it, exactly as it is, no more no less.  I'm not claiming that I always succeed, or even mostly succeed.  Seeing the world as it is isn't easy.  In fact I've found it to be damn hard, since what you may be seeing may not be pleasant.  But to me, viewing the world through a lens of positivity is just as wrong as negativity.  Positive thinking is just as much a form of self-delusion as negative thinking.

My first encounter with the power of positive thinking was way back in college.  I didn't agree with it then, and still don't.  The guy who expounded on it in class supported his belief in it by describing an incident that had been in the local news of parents who had gambled on an untested and expensive cure for their child that had succeeded in saving the child's life.  To him, the lesson was that if the parents hadn't engaged in positive thinking, the child might have died.  I disagreed. 

From the beginning of time, and well before positive thinking, people have been defying the odds as they see them and taking actions that they believe have no chance of success.  It's called hope, an ancient concept.  To me hope is a much more valid approach to living.  It implies an objective evaluation of reality and perhaps a decision to pursue a course of action that is probably doomed to failure, or perhaps not.  Perhaps the parents of that child didn't engage in positive thinking.  Perhaps they did what parents have done from the first time there were parents:  acknowledge the futility of their actions, but go on anyway, and hope for the best.

This is my approach to recovery from my stroke.  Realistically, I don't think I will achieve complete recovery.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I won't.  I don't know with absolute certainty that I won't, though.  In fact, I hope I will.