Comparative Optimism

What a fabulous, glorious Sunday afternoon.  My house is clean, appointments rescheduled, washing machine swishing rhythmically, nothing pressing, so I am listening to my "bossanova station" on Pandora, fine-tuning it with the occasional thumbs-up or thumbs-down, and thinking about some recent events in my life.
You see, my step-father died a few days ago, and while I have never pretended that there was any love lost between us, I was sad when he died.  I mourned the loss of a wasted life, and for a few days I tortured myself with childhood memories and adult angers.
But I am admittedly an exemplar of the Pollyanna principle in action.  For those who missed the Disney movie starring Hayley Mills, Pollyanna was a little girl who, even though she had any number of hardships assault her, remained an optimist.  According to Wikipedia (please don't tell my students I quoted the Big W!) research indicates that, "at the unconscious level, our minds have a tendency to focus on the optimistic, while, at the conscious level, we have a tendency to focus on the negative."  This makes sense to me, because, as my husband will tell you, I am most inclined to exist in a primarily unconscious (I prefer subconscious) level in a place that has come to be known by my friends and family as "Cheryl Land."  It is a beautiful place where the weather is much like it is today (except when I want it to rain or snow), where I have plenty of money (unless it is necessary for me to struggle financially and perhaps gain the admiration of those around me), where I am healthy (unless I have had to bravely throw myself into a car which was moving at a moderate speed to rescue a small animal or an innocent child), and where I have recently discovered that Elvis was my real father.
Yes, I confess--I live in a dream world.  Not all of the time--just when it is absolutely necessary.  For example, I was in an after school faculty meeting a couple of weeks ago when my daughter, who is also a teacher at my school, came and sat by me and tried to talk to me.  I guess I wasn't really paying attention, because the next thing I knew, she had grabbed me rather forcefully by the arm and was saying, "Stay with me!!!  Don't you dare leave me here by myself!"
Before you begin to judge me, let me point out the benefits of my dual citizenship.  In my mind, I can make time go either very fast or extremely slow.  Suppose I am worried about something?  I can make time speed up over and over again toward an endless number of possible resolutions.  And when I want to savor the moment, I can slow it down to the point that a second could conceivably take a century.
I have been doing this since I was a small child, but it was not until I gave birth to my first child that I realized the power my mind could have over my body.  I learned, during labor, the way I could not only alter my breathing to make the present moment expand or contract according to necessity, but how I could, when I needed to, live one moment at a time, focusing and refocusing on innumerable new beginnings, to survive pain.
The danger of living in one's head, however, is that it can become an addiction.  So, yesterday, I jerked myself back into what most people would consider reality, and I met with my two step-sisters.  I had not seen them for over forty years, having had an emotional wedge placed between us by my step-father.  I discovered that the two young girls of my memory had changed very little.  They are a few years older than me, two years apart in age from each other, and though they don't look a lot alike, give the impression that they are so in tune with each other that they could be twins.  I was quite taken with their obvious, mutual affection, and perhaps even more poignantly, with their unconditional acceptance of each other.   It made me sorry that I had not sought them out sooner.
People ask me quite often, what prompts me to write these blogs.  To be honest, I don't usually have a predetermined outline or plan--I just write toward realization, stopping and starting, until I stumble upon the thing that deep down I need to think and say.  And what I need to say to myself today is:  Don't be a victim.  Don't discard people.  Don't allow yourself to use them then let them go as though they don't exist outside your consciousness.  Don't allow yourself to adopt a self-serving bias which attributes your successes to internal or personal factors, and your failures to external or situational factors.  Dare to examine your life, to fine tune it relentlessly, so to speak, giving a legitimate thumbs-up or thumbs-down to your thoughts, actions, and reactions.  And don't be afraid to come out of yourself from time to time.