Inspiring...the unplanned second part.

Today was pretty quiet. I guess everyone already learned all they needed to about me. I also slept better last night which was a bit of a relief.

My aunt suggested that I watch the TED talk by Stella Young as it is basically what I said in my “Inspiration” blog post. I had previously watched a clip of it but it’s definitely worth watching the entire thing. It’s basically my entire "Inspiration" rant only much better said.

One thing though, at the end of her talk, she talked for a minute about the whole “the only disability is a bad attitude” vibe that comes from a lot of places. People are told that they just need a positive attitude to get through. It sounds ridiculous to anyone who has ever struggled with anything that all they needed to do is ‘be positive and the problem will be solved!’

However, people do say it. Like yesterday, when a nurse who was taking my blood told me that I just needed a positive attitude to get my transplant. I wish I could say that it was the first time I’ve been told that. I didn’t feel comfortable getting into a debate with her as she was poking a needle in my arm so I simply said something about how it’s hard to have a positive attitude every day for 11 months.

To which she replied, that when she thinks she is going to have a bad day, she has a bad day. So the reverse must be true. Also, that when she is running late for work, she’ll send out positive universe vibes to get green lights and sometimes it works.

How do you respond to that? 1) Waiting for a lung transplant is not the same as the 50/50 chance that you’ll get a green light on your way to work. 2) What happens when I send out good vibes and the family of the person who is dying sends out good vibes? Do they cancel out? Does the person with the most people caring about them win? And 3) (and the one that I find most frustrating), if I just need to send out a positive attitude, than clearly I’m at fault for not having a lung transplant because if only I was more positive. And obviously anyone who has ever died from some horrible disease was just not being uplifting enough to please the cosmos.

It’s not my fault. Shit happens. Stop pushing your positive attitude theory on me.
 

Anyway…I wasn’t planning on spending much time on this post this evening but it seems my ranting got out of my control. If you have 10 minutes, check out this video. It’s well worth your time. You'll learn much more than that cat video you were going to watch afterward.