So, Is It So Bad to Be a Pollyanna?

photo credit: Wikipedia

In a recent post I said that my intention was to look at the “real” Pollyanna. This character appears in a book of the same name, published in 1913, and has gone on to live a long life in adaptations for stage and film, the most famous being the 1960 Disney version starring Hayley Mills.

Pollyanna is known for playing the “Glad Game” (not the “Gland Game,” as I originally typed it), taught to her by her father, in which she tries to find something to be glad about in every situation. The original inspiration comes when Pollyanna expects to get a doll from the “missionary barrel” but finds only a pair of crutches. Her father tells her to look on the bright side: She can be glad that she doesn’t need them!

Pretty nauseating stuff, isn’t it? And pretty much the last thing you want to hear from someone when you’re in the midst of a great sorrow or crisis is “Take heart–it could be woise!” Yes, you might think, the laws of physics might have stopped working and we could have all fallen into the sun and been incinerated this morning. So what? That thought doesn’t help me in this situation.

I think when it comes right down to it the only people in a bad situation who can decide to play the “Glad Game,” to have the “gratitude attitude,” as it’s also put, are the ones who are actually affected. It’s completely presumptuous to push this idea onto someone else when your own life hasn’t been upended. Trying to be a Pollyanna for other people is the source of an awful lot of hurtful comments that are said with the best of intentions. The one that popped into my mind just now as the old “Don’t worry–you’ll have other children” to the woman who’s just suffered a miscarriage.

I think we can also misuse the Pollyanna Affect when we hear about some horror in the news. We want to make ourselves feel better, to think that the tragedy isn’t so bad. I found myself thinking (and I’m ashamed to admit this) about the Nice truck attack that at least it wasn’t a truck bomb. It’s not a dismissal of the death and suffering that this crime has caused but, I realized, more of a way to soothe myself. And that’s not a legitimate response.

So what is? Nothing less than clear-eyed realism. Not catastrophism, not false comfort. Only when we look at events steadily will we react properly. Can we be grateful in the midst of grief? Yes we can–but only when we understand the scope of that grief, and only when it’s ours. We can’t really be grateful on the behalf of someone else. Instead, if possible, we can empathize, and encourage, and look for practical ways to help. (“Let me know if I can do anything” is completely useless.) We can, as the Apostle Paul said, “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep” (Romans 12:15 KJV).

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