Definitions

First of all, happy first post of 2019!

December was much busier than I expected over my break, so I did not blog, nor did I accomplish my writing goals, but that’s what this year is for.

This is my year, or at least that is the attitude I’m going in with. As we go into the new beginning, we all need to define the goals we want to accomplish. Whether they are resolutions or lifelong dreams we are still pushing for.

As we all travel through life, we struggle with “finding ourselves”. We are often stumped by the simple question, who are you?

Our identities are extremely important in society, in humans today. As a college student, I see this everyday, people discovering more things about themselves, learning what they want to pursue with the rest of their lives.

The idea of definitions came to my head this week in my training for my second job I’m taking on. Starting January 14th, I will be a German tutor at my university. During training, we discussed identities and how they might affect how we help others, how students might identify themselves and to be courteous of them.

Whilst there, I had to list my identities and explain them to a group of other tutors. In the midst of “writer, anthropology student, Hufflepuff, daughter, aunt, girlfriend”, I wrote that I am a Positivity Enthusiast.

The group looked at me with confusion, and I realized that maybe people do not understand what I mean by that. I have proclaimed it on social media, here in my blog posts, but I went back and realized I did not explain myself on this identity.

So here is my definition:

I use the term Positivity Enthusiast instead of optimist because of the negative connotation with it. Society assumes an optimist is unrealistic and dumb, not fully accepting the truth about life.

Having optimism is part of being a Positivity Enthusiast, but it’s not about ignoring the bad things in life. It is accepting the negativity life gives us and using it as motivation to make life better. It’s about knowing there are better things to come.

Being a positive person doesn’t mean you deny negative things exist, it’s realizing it is more important to rejoice in the positive. To be kind. To be mindful of other people. To be a community.

Explaining this to the group was really heart-warming, and they told me they loved this point of view.

It reminded me how much I love it, too.

I hope your 2019 is positive and enjoyable.