It's Not All Love And Light And Good Vibes Only
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In the (Western) world of Yoga and Wellness (and to be honest in life in general), all too often I come across people sharing posts and messages of “Good Vibes Only” and “Light & Love Only”. There are numerous versions of this, but whether you’re telling people to “look on the bright side” or “just think positive”, it’s all doing the same thing - discounting that people have painful or difficult experiences, because it makes you uncomfortable hearing about it.
Here’s the thing - life isn’t good vibes only. Good vibes only allows us to bypass the issues, to ignore people’s pain. Good vibes can’t cure a global pandemic or cancer or any chronic illness that so many of us live with daily. Good vibes only doesn’t allow you to dig deeper into social injustice, racism, ableism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, because when you only look on the bright side, you’re turning away from anything that could be remotely difficult or painful for you to digest (and hopefully these are). And furthermore, you’re making other people’s pain and struggle about you - it’s more important that you experience only good vibes than that you look at what others are going through and try to understand, help, or at the bare minimum, acknowledge.
Our world, both individually and as a collective, is filled with struggles, with pain, with difficulty, with harmful and downright violent actions and thoughts. Yes, there is also beauty and love and kindness and joy and humans helping other humans. I’m not saying the good vibes don’t exist, and that being positive doesn’t have its place (I, too, have followed some of the “good news” types of accounts to counter the daily death toll numbers during the pandemic). I’m saying that they aren’t the only thing that exists, and we need to acknowledge that. Furthermore, as we’ve seen throughout the COVID pandemic, often we see this kindness and generosity and love in the midst of the struggle. We’ve watched as communities have come together (virtually or at a distance) to support each other, as people have donated and offered up services to help those in need, as hospital workers came out of retirement to help the ill. Often, it’s in seeing the struggles- really seeing them, not just hitting the “like” button on social media - that encourages us to reconsider, to act, to examine our own selves, to step up into that place of love and kindness and generosity, to look at ourselves as part of the collective and not just an individual. If we “Good Vibes Only” it, we miss that opportunity because we refuse to really see and acknowledge what’s happening in the first place.
To take this more into the yoga realm, I offer you the Yamas.
Ahimsa - non-violence or non-harming. When you deny or silence someone’s pain, struggle, or story by claiming “Good vibes only” or “only light & love here”, you are, in fact, causing them harm. Denying someone’s reality is, in my opinion, one of the most harmful things you can do. Furthermore, you may well be perpetuating further harm by not taking the time to listen, to address the issue, to see how you can help, to see if what you’re doing may be part of the larger issue.
Satya - Honesty or Truthfulness. I’m going to be blunt - it’s not honest or truthful to say that life is all good vibes, light, and love only. It might be your truth (though I doubt it, we’re all human), but take a quick glance at 2020 alone, and it’s startlingly clear that it’s not everyone’s truth.
Asteya - Non-stealing. This could go several ways. Cultural appropriation and turning yoga into feel good, toxic positivity, for one. Stealing someone’s voice by not letting them share/bypassing their story that might not be all light and love and good, to name another.
Brahmacharya - Right use of sexual energy. Ok, so this one might not apply directly to your “good vibes only” actions. But when you’re all love and light and good vibes, when you’re not allowing discussion about, or acknowledging experience of, trauma and abuse and assault, that’s not upholding this yama.
Aparigraha: Non-grasping or non-clinging. People cling to their “good vibes only”, their “light and love only”, and there’s no room for the other pieces of life (which, if we’re honest, make up much of it). People are clinging so much to their idea of what yoga is that they aren’t open digging deeper, to learning what yoga truly is, to delve into the places that aren’t all light, to the places where we often learn and grow the most.
To be clear, I have nothing against love and light in themselves. I have nothing against positive outlooks or vibes or whatever you want to call them, when used appropriately. But when they’re used as toxic positivity to avoid or invalidate or silence other’s pain and suffering, or when they’re used as spiritual bypassing to avoid doing the internal work, that’s where it becomes dangerous. It allows us to avoid looking at and acknowledging realities in the world and in ourselves, and that often leads to perpetuated cycles of everything from cultural appropriation to social injustice and yes, even to things like the pandemic, because if we can’t look at the dark pieces (say, hundreds of thousands of people dying around the world), we won’t see the damage being caused and we won’t know how to do our part in keep it from continuing.