Cultivating Optimism In Times Of Adversity
Positivity is not a lifestyle accessory but a state of being to transcend life's difficulties and create a better world
Who’s to blame?
Many years ago when I still lived in South Africa with my husband and small children we were burgled. I won’t go into details, suffice to say that it was violent and terrifying. Unable even to consider returning to the scene of the crime, we ended up staying at a friend’s house for a couple of months. Needless to say, we were all traumatised.
However, I remember one day shortly after the break-in opening my friend’s wardrobe and finding a quote on the inside door attributed to Marcus Aurelius that said:
Everything that happens, happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.
Why do bad things happen?
Accepting that things happen for a reason, and that everything is as it should be, is a tricky concept to entertain. Generally speaking, when bad things happen to us, we are often encouraged to blame ourselves or others for our circumstances. However, back then, when I read the quote in the wardrobe the quote struck me as profoundly true, and in that moment found complete acceptance of the horror that had occurred. I felt no blame or anger for the men who brought deadly weapons into our family home. On the contrary, I remember feeling genuine compassion for them, because I had seen that they too were trembling with fear. I could empathise with their perspective for all in South African were raised in a political environment that fostered fear, mistrust and separation based on racial differences – divide and conquer being the age-old device of governments to control people.
The fact of the matter is that terrible things happen to people every day, and it is more evident than ever in these times. How do we stay positive and keep going in the face of so much social dysfunction and suffering? Acceptance and integration of this personal experience and others has shaped my approach to current global events. This is what I have learnt, and I warmly invite you to share your own strategies for being positive in the comments.
Hope and optimism in spite of the present difficulties, indeed.
First of all, it’s important to realise that staying positive is not some kind of lifestyle choice. It’s not false cheeriness, or a forced denial of the state of things. We are required to go deep within ourselves to be and sustain being positive. It requires us to constantly seek the truth, accept it and take responsibility for the choices that contributed to our ignorance, and then transcend the uncomfortable feelings and experiences it brings. In transcendence, we recognise and remember our innately human state of being, that of striving for love.
Human beings are uniquely able to triumph and thrive in difficult circumstances. We are uniquely capable of transmuting pain and suffering into courage and love. Such is the strong stuff of which our creative human spirit is forged.
Accepting that we cannot change others is essential.
Like many, I spent much of 2020 and early 2021 deeply distressed by what was happening in the pandemic, and endured many sleepless nights. I felt that if I could just could just influence health authorities to employ evidence-based Covid strategies, influence friends and family to stop outsourcing their health to politicians, and expose the vaccine industry corruption, things would start to get better. I worked night and day evaluating old and new studies, and anxiously monitored international drug safety databases, noting the escalating number of reported Covid ‘vaccine’ harms and deaths with distress.
Tears shed inadvertently during the closing speech I made at the close of the International Ivermectin for Covid Conference (IICC) in April 2021 are a testimony to this phase of despair accompanying awareness and a sense of personal responsibility for others.
Fortunately, somewhere along the line, I realised I didn’t have to let it get to me. I didn’t have to feel this way. I realised I actually had a choice as to how I responded and how I experienced this extremely novel situation, a situation in which I knew that many people were going to die due to ignorance, malfeasance and deception.
If I have a choice, then so does everyone else.
This was a revelation. Why? Because I realised that other people’s response to life was their responsibility, not mine. I could not change their minds, nor could I shoulder the burden of their suffering – this was beyond my control. What I could do though is set out to effect positive change within my own life, that might help others.
As months passed, I found many areas in need of improvement and healing within myself. Again, being positive is not a lifestyle choice; neither is it possible because one is under the illusion that all is rosy; rather it’s the result of essential ongoing personal development. This is not to say that I don’t ever feel distressed or angry. But I am learning to observe these emotions, and not let them pull me under. By letting go of the things I have no control over – such as other people’s opinions, reactions and experiences – I am able to resume control of my own ability to choose.
Cultivating optimism isn’t necessarily an easy path.
It takes a willingness to look into the darker corners of our psyche and understand what is making us feel angry, sad or afraid. In the observing, my own experience is that we step out of being governed by knee-jerk reactions, and move into a state of sovereign awareness. Rather than laying blame on others for the state of things – which is hugely disempowering – we can acknowledge our own complicity and take action to change that. In doing so, we regain our own agency and here’s the cosmic irony: in letting go trying to control everything else and simply focusing on what we can control, we can exert the most incredible, positive influence on the world.
I fully trust that being positive will bring the positive change that is needed, one step, one day and one smile at a time.
And, as always, thank you for your support!
If you enjoy my Substack articles, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. All proceeds go to the work of the World Council for Health. Thank you!
P.S. The lithograph by Robert Siwangaza above is a favourite work of art that has inspired and motivated me to keep my chin up since 1992 – a tribute to the late Mr John N. Muafangejo, Man of Man. May we all be as fondly remembered.
Thank you for this post, I have shared it with friends. Something truly helpful for tending to my well-being in these times has been to memorize this verse from Rudolf Steiner. I offer it as as a resource for anyone who may resonate with it: "We must eradicate from the soul all fear and terror of what comes toward Man, out of the future. We must acquire serenity in all feelings and sensations about the future.
We must look forward with absolute equanimity to everything that may come. And we must think only that whatever comes is given to us by a world-directive full of wisdom.
It is part of what we must learn in this age, namely, to live out of pure trust, without any security in existence - trust in the ever-present help of the spiritual world. Truly, nothing else will do if our courage is not to fail us.
And let us seek the awakening from within ourselves, every morning and every evening."
-Rudolf Steiner
Whilst I agree with much of what you say, especially with regards to acknowledging other people's choices; I also struggle with the fact that the UK Govt and NHS response to convid left me with oral cancer and now a speech impediment which impacts on my ability to work (have been an online lecturer for 12 years), impacted on my income for 12 months and at times my confidence especially on days when I know my speech is not clear or going out for a meal or having a takeaway even with friends at times as I can struggle with eating. That part varies and I never know how I am going to be.
Part of my personal response to this is positive. I tell my GP on a regular basis where to get off when he tries to send me for all sorts of cancer checks because I have had cancer. No, it was not genetic, it was trauma induced and caused by your colleagues and peers. I refuse as so many seem to do, to claim to be a 'cancer survivor'. It was a lump, it was removed, no big deal in that regard.
However, I struggle with the concept of everything happens for a reason relative to this. I also lost my dear mum a few months earlier than we probably would have done because she felt compelled to wear a face nappy although I am forever grateful that she did not live to see me undergo my surgery. Only to be assured that the day she died she knew I had a private hospital appt (although obviously, given it was only 3 hours after she passed, I could not attend).
Yes, I struggle remaining positive. I go out, spend time amongst nature, walking, enjoying my dogs. I have never been that materialistic and in later life that social even. But when you realise that something you have said to someone whilst out and about, despite their being ever so polite and making out that they have understood you but knowing that you have not been able to speak with clarity, encourages you towards silence. In many respects, I don't feel comfortable with everyday life never mind the worries I have about the potential evil plans those who have caused this have for us all and its further impact on myself and my family. I cannot fathom a reason and nor do I think I want to for what has happened and what is happening. I try not to wallow in the 'its not fair' but it isn't fair. My consultant may be great and also a non-believer but I should not have needed him, surgery or anything else.