As a pre-adolescent, I loved Eleanor H. Porter’s Pollyanna stories. There was what I viewed as the wonderful movie with the truly bee-you-ti-ful Haley Mills, but first there had been Eleanor’s terrific 1913 and 1915 books. So terrific, in fact that they spawned spin-offs by other authors, the most recent being published in 1997. In my mind, Pollyanna rocked! She had little adversities that she overcame with intelligence and pluck, all the while maintaining a positive outlook through playing what she called “The Glad Game.” No matter how rotten the conditions, Pollyanna could find something about which to be glad. But, in a way that I could easily identify with, she also had a streak of not exactly naughtiness, but what I preferred to characterize as free-thinking. Altogether, I found her quite admirable.
Not to be obscure, I’ll tell you right up front, generally, according to my amused co-workers, I grew up to become a Pollyanna figure. They maintain that I absorbed those positive, plucky characteristics. Until recently, no matter how dark the components, I usually could find a bright, or at least darkly humorous, outlook in any situation. Not so anymore though, I am too besieged! The season of comfort and joy aside, this Pollyanna is growing despondent; the “Glad Game” is getting more and more difficult to maintain.
Yeah, my Pollyanna side tells me, just like most of us here in the United States, I have a pretty good life compared to folks in much of the world, but – and it’s a mighty big but – my increasingly evident darker side is telling me that things aren’t all that glad-making.
Some of the issues that are weighing me down:
*My local government is trying to destroy my neighborhood by building a drag-strip roadway on the perimeter.
*My state government has cast me into perpetual morning darkness. (As Longfellow said in “Evangeline,” “Darkness of slumber and death, forever sinking and sinking.”)
*My Federal government for years has imposed psychologically and financially draining things that are impacting me today and will drag on into the future to haunt my grandchildren.
One at time, I can deal with things like this, but governments are placing layer-on-layer of un-gladness on me. They’re piling-on and wherever the referee is, a penalty doesn’t seem to be being imposed. This is why this Pollyanna, who doesn’t much cotton to being a whiner, is growing despondent.
At a recent lecture on “Successful Aging,” we aging attendees were told that usefulness and a flexible attitude were important to good late-life years. Stress-resistance through a sense of control and avoiding feelings of helplessness also were recommended. Sensible suggestions, I’m sure, but difficult to implement feeling useful and non-rigid when I’m suffering 1000 pinpricks! I don’t have enough hands to hold all of the hurts. Circumstances are forcing this Pollyanna to morph into a junior Andy Rooney, just crabbing, wagging my finger and feeling my eyebrows wave in the breeze of hot air emanating from my very un-glad rantings. Ain’t nothing here to make me glad!
So, how to get back that former glad-self feeling?
Dumbing down as an option? “Ain’t got no brains, ain’t got no headaches,” my friend Patsy says. Should I just become oblivious to the doings of government? Stop listening to NPR and reading the news?
Engage in social activism as an option? Maybe, but I’m not 20 anymore. I might not have enough years of life left to see my causes come to fruition. But, then again, I might. That old pluck and “free-thinking” might just snap into service and provide that recommended feeling of usefulness.
Not so long ago, my fortune cookie advised: “Hope is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.” How appropriate to my circumstance! The sort of message that makes a little smile push its way through the pinched-mouth look that I’ve been wearing lately. Now there’s something to make a Pollyanna glad!