Pollyanna trusted everyone. Let us never forget what happened to the little blonde, pig tailed, seriously naive girl! In the end, she fell from a tree, broke her back and was paralyzed. Lesson learned.
She believed the best in people and always went out of her way to do something nice for everyone she met. She always trusted, no questions asked; she gave and gave and gave to the embittered towns people never letting their nasty little high fluting attitudes seep into her heavenly goodness. Did the doctor and all those miserable people in the town flock to her in the end? Yes. But let us be serious, was it pity, guilt or a genuine realization of the message she was so desperately trying to bring to them? I used to think it was a happy ending, now I struggle with the thought that when she waved good-bye from the train taking her away to a hospital to fix her back, everyone in town more than likely heaved a sigh of relief that she was finally gone.
I used to be called a Pollyanna. Yes, I had pigtails as a little girl, but that was where the physical resemblance ended. I was always trusting and thinking the best of people in every situation and in the end always seeming to get screwed.
How does anyone make the jump from constant disillusions of happiness to seeing people for who they really are deep inside? The problem is that I happen to like my worn in rose colored glasses. Everything looks so nice and pretty and I can go about my merry little way without a care. Without those glasses I feel like I am living in the bowels of hell where everyone is already damned.
I can liken it to Willy Wonka. Although slightly odd and misshapen with his own dysfunctional family issues, he was also screwed by the people he trusted the most and when he least expected it. So he holed himself up in a world he created for himself; a safe place filled with oompa loompas that only did his bidding because of their really messed up co-dependent relationship and the coveted cocoa bean.
But deep down, Mr. Wonka he knew he was missing something in his life. So he constructed an elaborate plan to choose one child out of millions to inherit his fortune. The only problem with the story is that in the end, he simply moved the poverty-stricken child and his entire family into his factory and still never went outside to face the demons banging on his gate. Again… was it really a happy ending or do we just want it to be because we want to eat our Wonka bar guilt free?
So how do you go about creating the line between real trust in people and out and out disillusion? It seems that just as I lack a “gay-dar”, I also seem to lack a trust mechanism to protect me when I go Pollyanna on people.
The truth is that I have demons knocking down my gate and I plan to face them head on. And although I would most enjoy a safe and happy false world created around chocolate, but let’s be honest. If I were to hole myself up and eat nothing but candy, it would also not have a happy ending.
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