good evening.

positivity is a weird thing, because it has many flavors that it can take on. and lack of positivity in the conventional sense doesnt mean lack of positivity in every other way.

one way positivity can exist is the one that most people associate with the word. it means thinking positively of the future, believing you can do it, you can reach things that are desirable, you can win. it is the polar opposite of hopelessness. but this is not the only option.

i often have to explain to people that i am not depressed. and indeed, i am not. but i, at least until quite recently, have had a very bleak outlook on life. but notably, it was not a hopeless outlook on life. it was still a form of positivity, but more like it was consumed by a mind altering fungus that made it into a twisted version of itself: i call it rothope. it may also be called positive negativity, or grim optimism.

this other way positivity can exist is characterized by hope in hopelessness: "i will have a massively fucking messed up life but no matter what is thrown at me i can twist it to my advantage and persist". if i have nothing left to lose, that is actually the ideal state because i am safe from losing more. and nothing can truly make life not worth living. this means i cannot think in a way that makes me feel truly hopeless, because no matter what, it will still be enough to live somehow, and i can twist every single thing into being a positive.

however because i can decide what i believe in any given moment, i have decided that it is actually more advantageous to switch my thinking to the first type of positivity. if shit gets fucked, i can still switch back after all, and turns out some normal people actually get to have a quite decent life even now, so there is actually potential for me to win, not just to lose. thus i should probably aim to win a little more. if the chance to do that disappears i can flip back to nothing left to lose mode and call absolutely anything that gives me happiness of any sort a win.