The disease of positivity is the ailment of this time

Well, according to Mark Rutte, profits are sloshing against the baseboards, and while I find that a nice vivid expression, I don't get the impression that the money is rising to everyone's lips nationally. Many companies seem to be just getting by, it seems to me. And in that crazy media sector in which I work, I don't think it's any better. I can't look into the deep pockets of the people in the highest plush, but cutbacks don't seem to me to be a sign of sloshing financial prosperity.

Cutting back = firing people (among other things, I still understand something about business management) and so I have seen several farewell emails from colleagues over the past few years. Sometimes neat business emails, with a thank you for the good cooperation over the past years, but more often exaggerated sunny emails in which uncertain but decidedly golden and happy futures are glimmering on the horizon.

‘After having worked for X with great pleasure for many years, it is now time for new opportunities. Tomorrow is my last day here, as I am leaving the company. Everything is open, but first I am going to think calmly about the future. Maybe I will do something completely different, for example with my passion for yoga. Thank you all and if you feel like having a drink sometime, you can reach me at hotsupachicka82@gmail.com,’ you read – or something to that effect. Very strange, because I totally miss the words ‘dismissal’, ‘shit’ and ‘Molotov cocktail’ in such an email.

Being fired is of course no fun at all and I haven't seen anyone leave without tears or a lump in their throat, heading towards a serene open future paved with yoga mats. No, of course not, because damn, how are you going to do that with money, your mortgage, that days-long unemployment sitting at home after a brief vacation feeling? How do you ever get a job that is at least or almost as fun as the job you already had? And how easily do you shake off the feeling that your dismissal is nothing personal? A forced dismissal is crying and sulking, until you get up from the suits you were sitting in and continue with life – because this is also life. I think you can say that you are, to put it mildly, not amused. It is really unnecessary to start putting a positive spin on things when it is clearly very negative.

I find that positivity disease a malady of this time. Everything has to be inspiring, positive and #lovemylife. I can hardly stand many people on Instagram anymore; all holier than the Pope. Everyone praises their job, hangs out with the sweetest @heiligboontje666, swears by inspiring TED Talks from strong women (a pleonasm, I will also get angry about that one day), ‘gets to’ create beautiful things with nice people and is overflowing with happiness, healthiness and all smilesiness.

That positive nonsense is not only seen there. You see it in the grandiloquent language of government members who sell crappy measures to society with a together-we-can-do-it attitude, while their own shoulder is hardly burdened by it. From spin-doctoring stupid jobs into a challenge (I once worked at the toilets in a nightclub and when it changed ownership, I was allowed to stand by the coats for a white minimum wage – which was definitely a step back compared to cleaning black toilets – which according to the new manager was a challenge because I could then manage the wardrobe myself and also tell friends that I worked in the coolest club in Amsterdam, a status that club once had but has not been able to live up to for ten years, so... How cool! An offer I can't refuse! Anyway, this is how jobs with ridiculously long hours, a lot of stress and impossible demands and goals are positively marketed as ‘opportunities’ and ‘challenges’ to ‘generate impact’ on a ‘dynamic organization’, where you could also translate the last claim as ‘a relatively unstructured company that likes to react to the whims of the day and everyone perks up at every new marketing bead as if it were the savior’. No, I’m rambling on. But you get it, that spin-doctoring. And then pretending that a forced dismissal is a beautiful journey for which you should be grateful that you get to make it.

My point: stupid is stupid. And what is stupid can remain stupid. It doesn't need to be upcycled into a positive story. Especially not because you can feel in your gut that it’s not all that wonderful and those little lies come across as even more painful. Maybe you should name how rotten something is, see it as a realistic representation of your findings or feelings at that moment. Nothing wrong with that. And that you eventually get up, dust off your clothes and make sure that life smiles at you again is usually a given – but you don't need to take a little advance on that by acting a bit prematurely positive.

Shall I write next week about how a week of not whining goes for me?

Text: Kalinka Hahlen