Well, that was hard.
The second day of the Big Joy Project involved reflecting on a past negative event and reframing it to consider some of the positive aspects that can emerge from difficult experiences.
This is hard for me. I usually think of myself as resilient, as someone who endures hard things. I don’t usually think of reframing them. Bad things happen, and I name them as bad, and I move on. Often, I regard attempts to see the good that comes out of bad events as a somewhat Pollyanna-like response. Don’t even get me started on “everything happens for a reason.”
However, here is how I approached this. Most things that happen in our lives are a mix of good and bad. That there is a mix of good and bad elements doesn’t change the fact that some of them are all things considered bad. What do I mean by that? I mean, my life would have been better overall if they hadn’t happened. Still, some good is present as part of the mix, and perhaps there is value in paying attention to the good.
So what’s an example from my life? One that’s loomed large here on the blog for many years is my story of knee osteoarthritis and knee replacement surgery. What’s the good that’s come out of it? It has certainly reinforced a lifelong commitment to physiotherapy and caring for my joints. I will definitely be riding my bike for the rest of my life. I’ve got a lot more empathy and understanding for people who suffer from chronic pain. I’ve come to like aquafit classes. It’s not all bad.
I’ve talked with my sister-in-law, Susan, about this in the context of a well-meaning person asking her if she thought her Parkinson’s diagnosis was a blessing. Susan likes a quote from a novel she read recently, “the story of our life is the story that we tell.” She says she can’t change the fact of having Parkinson’s, but she can change what she pays attention to. For example, this morning she was up early and enjoyed getting out for a walk before others were up and around. It was lovely outside, and pre-Parkinson’s, she likely would have slept through it.
I think I can get behind that slogan, “It’s not all bad.”
You can read about Day 1 of Big Joy here and about what the Big Joy project is all about here.