Happy Monday: Woman with Cancer Survives Optimism

When Barbara Ehrenreich was diagnosed with cancer, she sought options for treatment. She sought advice on dealing with the pains of battling cancer. Instead, waves of cheerful positivity gurus fell upon her like a two ton wall of smiley-face buttons, pins out.

Barbara wasn't interested in positivity. She didn't need a buttressed happy place, or a new friend to hold her hand amidst a sea of pink shirted soldiers of misfortune desperately trotting about to promote awareness of their obscure, much unpublicized medical condition -- cancer. She didn't need group discussions to feel empowered. She wasn’t interested in trading the hard fight ahead for a pocketful of pointless sunshine and a few pink ribbons.

She was dying. She was prepared to do what she could to make that situation change. She wanted the pricks of administered treatment, not the pricks of pins fastening buttons to her sweatshirt. She wanted some real advice on how to beat the stuff tearing her body down, not a sermon about bending the corners of her mouth up. She wanted pointers on dealing with pain; not on fooling herself into thinking she was happy in the face of death.

Above all, what she really wanted was to live. It didn't matter if the process of living called the broader principles of blind positivity into question.

Having survived, Barbara wrote Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. It's a book about the idiocy of pure positivity. While I'm not sure how positive thinking totally undermines an entire country, I relate to Barbara's sentiment. Haven't finished the book yet, but it's a decent read.

I recommend it. No, not because it’s particularly great or anything. It just feels good to cite another person who thinks you're all trying too damn hard to smile.

Take a look at an article on her work I found on the SF Chronicle's website.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/19/DD211A4O4C.DTL

See ya next week.