Can and does positive psychology help us with the tragic and terrible events in life?

The focus by positive psychologists on the positive has always raised in my mind two issues: how much use is positive psychology when life if really dreadful, and aren’t we being rather patronizing to people in the midst of tragedy and despair?

I wonder what other positive psychologists would say. I would say that we need to look at tragedy and despair squarely but not necessarily in the eye. To use the analogy of wild animals, some will become more aggressive if we stare them in the eye, but some will definitely attack if we lose eye contact. Worldliness is important and we need to understand the menace that faces us. But there is a season for everything, and to continue the analogy, whatever drew us to the bush in the first place, has brought us to this predicament. We need to understand our predicament, and even appreciate it, within the context of our wider lives.

It is so much more easily said than done. In dark times, we value our poets as much if not more than we do in bright times. They mirror what we are feeling - our despair and fear - against a backdrop of our hopes and dreams.

This poem is from Zimbabwe which you may know is in deep peril as they wait for long delayed election results to be announced. April has been a long month of waiting for them. The poet is Comrade Fatso, a local musician, who has his own website and blog. I don’t have his permission to use his poem here. I hope he doesn’t mind. I hope, too, you visit his blog and leave a kind word. Or go to his website and listen to his music (it is for sale!)

Street fillers

The streets are empty.

The state has retreated.

So has the opposition.

All we are left with

are their torn posters,

pasted over each other

in a confusing collage of symbols and slogans.

We also have their space-fillers.

Riot police

aimlessly

walk the streets,

batons in belts

like forgotten cellphones.

Or sometimes

unconsciously

swung in the air

like a stick-picked-up-on-a-path.

They walk the streets

like the thousands

of unemployed H-town youths.

Space-fillers.

Like the pothole-filling youths

who have taken over the suburban streets.

Stopping traffic,

asking for donations,

filling potholes.

Unhindered.


The state has gone back to the drawing board.

The opposition has stayed away from its stay-away.

Its re-count and re-plan time.

And all we have are their space-fillers.

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