A positive spin

We grow too wise in adulthood. We learn to sidestep the excitement we felt growing up, when we looked forward with abandon to the positive plans we’d made. As grown-ups, we chose self-defense, seek middle-of-the-road emotional stasis, slog dutifully through the drudgery of any given Tuesday. We dilute our anticipation for happiness by double, six cans of water to one can of orange juice concentrate. We caution ourselves—don’t look forward to something too much. Don’t over-invest. That way, if plans blow up, we won’t be disappointed.

It’s a defensible life philosophy. To be a yo-yo zinging along a string, with only highs and lows as our boundaries, is exhausting. And disillusionment is a hard lesson to overcome. But maybe we could learn to live like gyroscopes? Thrumming along, happily balanced on our string of emotions, spinning around a stable center? It beats a daily dose of watered-down Minute Maid.  

I remember the childhood anticipation I felt at the beginning of summer, with an armload of library books and the whole day to go outside and read them. Lying on a blanket in the shade, I watched the shadows float across the pages when the breeze ran through the branches of our Chinese elm. Those happy hours took me to a hundred different worlds.

I remember the ecstatic expectation I felt, in school on a Friday afternoon, when I had permission to stay over at a friend’s house for the night. We would catch eyes over the rows of desks and grin at one another, waiting for the bell to set us free. Then we’d run to her house and dump every toy she owned in the middle of the floor. After playing ourselves into oblivion, we would finally collapse and fall asleep in the middle of it all, even though we’d vowed to stay awake until breakfast.

I looked forward, with pure joy, to shopping trips at Gibson’s Discount Center, the Costco of my childhood. I couldn’t wait to visit my grandmother’s house, where the gold filigree candy dish held Brachs Neapolitan Coconut candies and bridge mix chocolates.

The anticipation of a hamburger at the Lions Club stand during the county fair was almost as good as the burger itself. Just catching the smell of those hamburgers cooking meant summertime, and childhood happiness, in olfactory form.

Almost more than the experiences themselves, I remember the giddy prospect of a new Disney movie at the theater, homemade ice cream at a family picnic, a playground with a tornado slide. I fully invested in my vanilla shake with onion rings at Tharp’s Drive-In after swimming all day at the pool. I shivered happily in my towel and used my pruny fingers to sprinkle more salt onto my mound of dipping ketchup. I never bothered to dread what might happen if their fryers broke down that day.   

Naturally, my childhood wasn’t an endless parade of cheerful anticipation. Take liver and onions, and the need my mother felt for me to try them again, just in case I’d developed a taste for wretchedness since the last time she served them for dinner.

I didn’t look forward to getting dressed up. I didn’t like putting my things away. I didn’t enjoy a trip to the dentist, no matter what they said about free bubblegum toothpaste. I dreaded cleaning out the chicken house, picking up branches after a storm, carrying five-gallon buckets of feed, and ripping out crooked seams on my 4-H sewing projects.  

To be fair, those are small items to dread, markers of a stable childhood with sane, loving parents, a reality that granted me fewer obstacles to overcome, growing up. But despite the reality of childhood wounds, I hope that all of us, as adults, look to help each other toward a happiness that doesn’t require diluting to feel safe. Mix your orange juice, full strength. Give your yo-yo a rest. Welcome today’s possibilities. Resist habitual dread.

Maybe, be a gyroscope.