My daughters listen to a musician named Alec Benjamin. He suited my mood last year as he tends to sing angsty woe-is-me songs. This year, however, I’m trying to ‘lean into’ a more sunshine-and-happiness version of myself in order to heal. There is, nonetheless, one song of his that sometimes gets stuck in my head. It’s called “I’m not a cynic” (2020).
I’m not sure what the copyright rules are with mass cut-and-paste, so here’s just a couple of sections that get me thinking about chronic pain, or just life in general:
I’m just being realistic, being honest with myself
I’ve tried being optimistic, but it doesn’t seem to help
So I’ll just have to admit this is the hand that I’ve been dealt
I’m not being pessimistic, just being honest with myself
*
You can’t just change the weather by changing your point of view
Some days you have to wait until the storms just passes through
*
God, I’m so sick of this notion that I have to fake
Fake my emotion and pretend I’m okay
So like a boat on the ocean,
I’ll just rock with the waves
*
I swear that I’m not a cynic, my glass just has no water in it today.
I don’t really identify with being cynical or pessimistic – especially when it comes to a diagnosis of chronic pain – I prefer to think of myself as a realist. Like the song suggests, wishing, hoping, praying, that the situation will change doesn’t make it so.
“Hope for the best and plan for the worst” was my mantra as a project manager, but I’m starting to think the ‘and’ steals some of the power from the hope. I am also starting to see that the stories we tell ourselves have way more power than I used to imagine. I’m starting to believe that being ‘realistic’ can be a bit pessimistic.
When my daughter said to me the other day that it would be fun to go on holidays with her friends for their annual mummy-daughter trip up the coast at the end of the year, I smiled and winced. It’s a 10-hour drive or a trip on a plane. “I don’t know,” I said, “it’s not that easy to take trips like that with a migraine” – which she knew meant “no”.
Later, I thought about it. It’s one thing to be hesitant to commit to something that’s happening tomorrow if you’re feeling under the weather today, but to say no to a trip more than 6 months from now on the premise that you’ll probably be sick? There’s only one word that comes to mind to describe that mindset – pessimistic.
Here’s hoping that you can do more than rock with the waves – that you can (metaphorically) learn to surf, hang-five, and live a totally ‘rad’ life of your own making. Here’s hoping that even if your glass has no water in it today, you can find a way while surfing to fill it with seawater, put it on a shelf and admire the progress that you’re making. Here’s hoping that whilst you recognise you can’t change the weather by changing your point of view, you CAN change your mood regardless, and that optimism is a choice we can all make.
Here’s hoping you keep hoping!
Take care and stay optimistic, Linda x
PS – I discovered that you can supposedly embed YouTube videos into your blog posts… here’s a test run – it’s the music video for “I’m Not A Cynic”:
The Mindful Migraine 
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