Over here at Chez SJG, where we serve kugel and Rose, nice bagels and lox all day, we embrace a philosophy that may or may not catch on, but just between us, we really don't give a hoot and a half. All we know is, it seems to work for us. Rather than project good ol' fashioned positivity, rather than embrace the lovely yet unproven notion that things will in fact work out, we do the reverse. We project reverse positivity into the universe, and in return, we get pretty wonderful results now and then. This is why kvetching is part of our collective DNA. Kvetch, we say. Kvetch with feeling and good things may or may not happen. For example: The eldest arrived home from France full of complaints about the @#$%'n visa situation and that tiny clerical error regarding his lack of a criminal history. The kvetch-a-thon began Friday afternoon and continued through Saturday morning. Once in a while, I interrupted with an acknowledgement of his suffering. "I know it's hard, I know it's --." That's as far as I got, but still, the impact of my empathy left its mark. By the time he got back to his apartment, the letter he'd been waiting for had arrived: "Mazel tov, your petition for a fiancee visa has been approved, more or less. Next it goes to the NCDLC (National Center for Driving Lovebirds Crazy). Then if you're lucky, it gets stamped there -- when? who's knows -- and then it goes to France! Bon jour! You're welcome." So. A few more hurdles to go, but all that reverse positivity seems to be working. Why stop now?
No comments:
Post a Comment