Tag: acceptance

Rejected from Something Good

A black and white photograph of a staircase with the top brightly lit enough that it obscures whatever is there, with a human figure, possibly wearing a backpack, standing near the top. The black serif text reads, "As I look back on my life, I realize that every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being re-directed to something better." The source is "Positive Energy."
A black and white photograph of a staircase with the top brightly lit enough that it obscures whatever is there, with a human figure, possibly wearing a backpack, standing near the top. The black serif text reads, “As I look back on my life, I realize that every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was actually being re-directed to something better.” The source is “Positive Energy.”

If you’re not familiar, Aesop’s Fables is a collection of short moralistic stories that have had a surprisingly strong influence over idioms in the English language.

Sort of pre-macro pithy advice, really.

“The Fox and the Grapes” is the tale of a very hungry (wait for it) fox who simply cannot reach the enticing grapes on a nearby grapevine.

So he gives up and says, “Pshhh, I didn’t really want those sour-ass grapes anyway.”

And hence we have the expression “sour grapes.”

This macro reminds me of that fox who determined that the unattainable grapes must be shitty.

Clearly, the moral is to devalue what you can’t obtain, because you’ll be happier if you don’t have to experience regret.

Gimme an A for Aesop!

This image choice feels strange for an inspirational quote. It’s a little on the eerie side.

I don’t have to stretch to imagine this as a poster for a horror movie, if it were just paired with an appropriately tattered or blood-drippy font.

“The Thing at the Top of the Stairs.”

Or even just, “The Stairs.”

“The Shining.”

But not that one.

Or, okay, I even could see it being that one.

And then again, in the end, isn’t this actually kind of a horrifying message?

Let’s examine that idea.

In a symbolic sense, it’s not hard to see how a long staircase represents the idea of being re-directed to something better.

But why is what’s at the top of the stairs assumed to be “better” than whatever is at the bottom?

Just as it can feel like you’ve conquered something scary when you achieve a desirable goal (i.e. getting to the top of the stairs), it can feel like you’ve chickened out or failed if your sights were set on an aspiration that you aren’t quite able to reach (i.e. staying at the bottom or turning around halfway through).

The fact that a person had to walk a long way to get to a destination does not make that destination any different, let alone better, than it would have been if it was closer.

It’s scary to confront loss and disappointment.

And there’s no doubt that it sucks to be rejected from something good.

But acting like the TOP of the stairs is better than the BOTTOM of the stairs is just rationalizing after the fact to make it feel like that long walk up the mystery stairs was worthwhile.

Who wants to admit that they hauled their ass up all that way for no real reason?

It sounds way more awesome when you’re like, “I committed to climbing these stairs with a purpose that I both achieved and exceeded! Hooray for stairs! Hooray for me!”

Compare that with, “I was probably just fine at the bottom of the stairs, and I wasn’t really sure why I decided to climb them, but I did, and I’m here now instead of there, and I am still fine because both places are equally fine.”

It’s pretty horrifying how the cult of Toxic Positivity pressures us to resist disappointment, ambiguity, and frustration by rejecting, avoiding, and reframing them rather than acknowledging and sitting with them.

This commentary on the limitations of the macro has no bearing on that fable, though.

Fuck those grapes.

The Right People

On a light brown, dappled background, a typewriter font says, "Don't change so people will like you. Be yourself and the right people will love you." In the lower left-hand corner, there is a cartoon picture of a toaster with a face high-fiving a coffee mug with a face, while a piece of toast with a face jumps out of the toaster. The logo in the lower right-hand corner is for the site "Positive Energy."
On a light brown, dappled background, a typewriter font says, “Don’t change so people will like you. Be yourself and the right people will love you.” In the lower left-hand corner, there is a cartoon picture of a toaster with a face high-fiving a coffee mug with a face, while a piece of toast with a face jumps out of the toaster. The logo in the lower right-hand corner is for the site “Positive Energy.”

As always, I grant that there is often a nugget (or more) of valuable insight tucked into the questionable folds of these macros.

So I’ll affirm the message that your authentic self has inherent value.

But enough of that talk.

Do you really want to hang out with anyone who goes around designating whole-ass humans as “right” and “wrong”?

“Don’t change . . . and the right people will love you.”

I can’t help reading “change is bad” as the dominant message, when “you deserve love” is probably a more salient takeaway.

I get that the macro aims to convey a simple message. “Right” people will naturally gravitate to other “right” people, who love each other as they are. But this also implies the existence of “wrong” people with the “wrong” kind of love, and dang.

That just doesn’t hold water.

Sometimes, the “wrong” people can sound a lot like the “right” people because they are enabling you to suck and/or to not really be yourself.

Sometimes self-proclaimed “right” people, who give you lots of supportive lip service, secretly thrive on shaming you from their high, high horses (and I mean tall-type high, y’all, not stoned ponies).

A lot of change-resistant folx like to invoke the defense that “I’m just being who I am / telling it like it is!” when they’re really just being intransigent assholes.

Sometimes, changing in response to the fact that people don’t like you is called “growth.”

There are always people with a vested interested in your being ignorant, downtrodden, demotivated, and dependent, and so they don’t want you to grow.

And those people just might be your family and friends, whose opinions may seem exactly like the “right” ones to value.

Those apparently “right” people might be the loudest about delivering the words to your ears that “they love you just how you are,” without bothering to specify that what they love about how you are is your willingness to permit them to suck and/or not grow.

“Be yourself” is not necessarily bad advice, but don’t fool yourself into believing that you never need to change or that “right” people even exist.

In terms of the image chosen to accompany this quote, I feel like a coffee-maker should be participating in the good times.

I mean, we’ve got toast and toaster together. Coffee and coffee-maker feels like a natural parallel, right?

The coffee is just personified by its vessel, though.

I wonder why toast is a sentient entity, but coffee is not.

Granted, I’m not aware of any liquids with personalities, but none of these characters are technically living things anyway, so at that point I don’t see why a solid state is a necessary criterion for a face.

They also all have exactly the same face, and I’m struggling with that.

It is a very cheerful face, for what it’s worth.

Anyway, when you think about it, toast is really just bread that has changed to be better liked by those who encouraged it to change in the first place.

The bread / toast depicted here always had intrinsic value, but its appliance buddies certainly seem thrilled with the outcome of the toasting.

Does this technically make them the wrong people (or people-like things) for pressuring their bread friend to change according to their preference? Or are they the right people-like things because they love that the toast is being its authentic self?

We can’t know if the bread became toast with the goal of being better liked by the coffee mug and toaster (and I question whether the toaster is able to recognize the influence of its own cultural bias).

If the bread decided to change just to earn the shallow approval of its judgey friends, then the message is kind of like, “Have a little self-respect, Bread.”

But if the change was motivated by truth-to-self rather than desire for popularity, it’s good that the appliances approve of the change, right? “Yay for Toast!”

Where does our ability to evaluate motive begin and end?

All we know for sure is that the visible impact of Bread’s choices is that it is now Toast.

Everyone looks happy, but that doesn’t mean everyone is happy.

I really want to believe that Giant Coffee Mug isn’t judging Toast because of its own projected shame.

I want to believe that Toast is living its best life, surrounded by its supportive friends.

In that case, we all deserve the kind of love that Toast has.

Remember that you are both imperfect and lovable.