Why are we told to think positively and to look on the bright side of things? Can facing the dark side of things or embracing circumstances of loss and failure offer alternative perspectives, which in turn offer different rewards? Is there an alternative to naïve optimism that can help us gain a humble sense of wisdom and a more intimate, less idealistic relation to life?

In The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde discusses the difficulties she encountered in trying to integrate her mastectomy and experience with breast cancer into the totality of her life, physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually. Her decision to incorporate the absence of her breast into her life and body, as well as ignore the illusory comforts of a lambswool puff or silicone breast, was interpreted as failure to “look on the bright side of things” (57). In addition to leaving Audre feeling outraged, insulted, and isolated, this attitude of blind, optimistic complacency reinforced the invisibility and subsequent powerlessness of women with breast cancer and contributed to the tendency of a society to deny death and ignore “the results of its own insanities” (63).

How can we overcome this collective denial that has naturalized breast cancer and the victimization of women? I believe that choosing to not look on the bright side of things may lead a person towards the reality that breast cancer is not a matter of attitude, but rather the result of “cigarette fumes, auto exhaust, airborne chemical dust” and “environmental madness” (77). Perhaps moments of disappointment and despair can provide an opportunity to puncture naturalized perspectives before they become mass delusions that fail to acknowledge disease, pain and death.