"If you're going to overthink, then overthink the positives. Overthink the best outcome. Overthink how good this life could be. Overthink how peaceful it would feel if things slowly and quietly worked out."
I suppose there are people out there who find statements like this comforting or affirming. To me it reeks of spiritual (or emotional? Idk — something!) bypass. I don't think the statement was made with anything but the best intentions, but for many people out there overthinking isn't something one can simply...redirect.
For the person "overthinking" about how to keep their kids fed or their water turned on or how to pay for a desperately needed pair of shoes, it sounds a hell of a lot like:
"Just think about better things."
"Don't worry so much about the hard stuff. Focus on the positive."
Can we just say that the hard things are real? That yes, things may turn out okay, but they may not. And the fear of that is real and valid. We aren't dealing with imaginary monsters in closets or under beds. We are talking about the fact that there are people who survive their lives by constant strategizing and assessments. Using "overthinking" in statements like this is dangerously trivialized.
It's thin. It's hollow. It's also kind of arrogant. What would my father's mother have to say in response, a woman who grew up sharecropping and raising children in the Jim Crow South? Who didn't even realize the Great Depression was happening because they were still living the same way? Who lived the rest of her life with guilt about her baby brother who was so sick, but she threatened him to get back out in the field and work so they could all eat? (He laid down and died in that field, by the way.) What would she have to say about "overthink how good this life could be"?
We cannot be reduced to inviting people to imagine away their suffering. Or for them to feel somehow deficient if they are unable to do so. Optimism ≠ resilience.
No, people don't have to rehearse catastrophe in their minds on a continuous loop. I don't believe my grandma did. She laughed a lot. A great laugh that was somehow deep and tinkly at the same time. And I fully believe she laughed all throughout her life, not just the years I was privileged to witness. For many people living stark realities, peace comes from accepting that things just might not work out the way they hope, but they keep finding the strength to live anyway.
Please keep your "power of positive thinking." I want honest reflection on hard reality. I want to look at suffering in the face and find meaning and community within it and beyond it.
That's where the real answer lies.
