How to explain the Pollyanna project? Well the above is Pollyanna...and if you don't know who I am talking about, I'll let Wikipedia fill in the rest...
Pollyanna is a best-selling 1913 novel by Eleanor H. Porter that is now considered a classic of children's literature, with the title character's name becoming a popular term for someone with the same outlook...Pollyanna has been adapted for film several times. Some of the best-known include Disney's 1960 version starring child actress Hayley Mills
That Hayley Mills version is the only one I've seen, and before you ask, no I've never read the books. I took an instant dislike to the character Pollyanna, she's all sunshine and lollipops and I'm afraid that's not an outlook that I often inhabit. However lately I'm come to the realisation that life is much more than the daily grind to get things done. That buried somewhere beneath the toil and the everyday motions are 'moments'. Pure, simple pleasures, the work of an instant that somehow make this 'thing' of living seem worthwhile.
Yes I realise some of you may be aghast that I've only just worked that out. And that's not true, we all know it innately don't we? But so often I feel caught up in the everyday that those moments just wash over, unappreciated, not noticed in amongst the little petty cares and hurt we all wear. When that hurts border on the bitter, I'm sure a tiny bit of one's soul is chipped away. Does anyone else feel that way?
So here I am, attempting to save those tiny bits of my soul I guess, one Pollyanna 'glad' moment at a time.
I've decided to not get mad or even (well I might keep those thoughts somewhere as I do like to keep score) but mostly I'm going to get 'glad'. I ran into a neighbour this week and we were talking and she said that a friend passed on advice to her 'I'm not going to get mad, I'm going to get amused...' Look at the title of this blog. Can you imagine what impact that little comment had for me. So gladness is seems is the new black, well at least for me.
So back to Pollyanna. She gets glad. Most of the time she gets so glad that (previous to my new glad period) I would have said the whole community where she lived probably would have been glad to see the end of her. But instead of the ending I imagine (something to do with stapling things to her head) I've decided to walk a little in her, well, glad rags. So I present the Pollyanna project.
Six weeks...(that's about as long as I can see myself keeping this up!) six weeks of daily posts about being glad. Not that I probably will have a chance to post each day, but taking the time to reflect and posting when I can is what I am promising. And what are the outcomes? I will probably be glad it's over, but hey...what harm can it do?
I leave you with a line from the book, thanks Ms Porter...
"When you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will."
