The Power of Anti-Platitudes
Why the way forward might actually be upside-down
Some things are said so often that they just ring true — “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all”, “Let’s agree to disagree”, “Good things come to those who wait”, and “M&Ms. Melts in your mouth. Not in your hands.”
There’s a bigger truth behind these ‘truths’, one that candy marketeers know all too well, but perhaps well-intentioned platitude-repeating caregivers do not — Repetition creates conviction. Familiarity creates legitimacy. Even if your life’s falling apart and you have ooey-gooey chocolate all over your fingers.
Let’s put M&Ms aside for a minute and bring up another. In ‘Guts Over Fear’, Marshall Eminem Mathers spits a pertinent verse: “It was ingrained in me that I wouldn’t amount to a shitstain I thought / No wonder I had to unlearn everything my brain was taught.”
Very often, the things that are ingrained into us early in life, turn out to be the same things that hold us back later in life. That goes for words of disparagement, in Eminem’s case, but also words of wisdom.
In other words, the advice that served us in our past might be maladapted for our present and future.
Since 2020 I’ve been running a small project called ‘Thoughts For The Dark’, which aims to collect (and share) the little breakthrough thoughts which have helped people get out of personally hopeless and trying times. What I find interesting about a significant and reliable subset of people’s submissions is how they take a piece of conventional wisdom, an axiom floating out in the intergenerational ether, and simply invert it.
I’ll give you an example — “It is what it is.” I’m sure you’ve heard this many times in life from various folk. It’s got a good, tautological ring to it. It’s an internally-logical sage-sounding reminder that life sure serves up a duffel bag of crap every now and then, and suggests the best course of action is to not try and change it, but accept it, suck it up, and keep moving. There’s no point questioning it, says the subtext — It is what it is.
This is what one submitter (who we’ll call Cliff) told himself over and over again throughout his demanding career in the creative industry. Cliff found himself working 12-hour days, 6 days a week. His clients were prestigious. His position as a design director, enviable. The pressure for awards, immense. The politics at work, unbearable. “It is what it is,” he would tell himself when trying to fall asleep after a hard day at work, like a warm cognitive nightcap.
Over time though, his nightcap weakened. Cliff would find himself repeating “It is what it is, it is what it is” later and later into the night, to try push down the mounting stress, the overwhelming anxiety, the feeling of stuckness and the toxicity of his work relationships.
One night, when tossing and turning into the wee hours, during a particularly trying period at work that pushed Cliff to his mental health limits, one thing changed — one word changed.
“It isn’t what it is,” thought Cliff. “It isn’t worth the prestige. It isn’t worth the long hours. It isn’t worth the pressure or stress or the toll my career is taking on my life.”
This breakthrough, this small but significant inversion, prompted Cliff to reexamine his job and redirect his career. “I’ve NEVER looked back,” he says now.
I have a personal example. Throughout my childhood a certain axiom was repeated to me by several well-meaning authority figures — “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all”.
On the surface this sounds like sound advice. But the unintended consequence of it is that, instead of voicing your valid yet spiky concerns, you subconsciously stifle them. Instead of de-barbing the articulation of your objections, you dismiss them entirely.
An unintended consequence of this unintended consequence is that you think everyone else is doing the same — saying nice things and holding back not-nice things. Your brain makes you think, “They don’t really mean that,” or “What they really think is x”.
Only recently have I begun to unlearn what I was taught, again through a simple inversion of this old thought — “If you don’t have anything nice to say, say it very carefully.”
How many of the nice-sounding, often-repeated platitudes of yesteryear are double-edged swords like these? After all, many were forged in eras of abject poverty, different societal demands, foreshortened lifespans, and unhealthy conceptions of beauty and masculinity and dental hygiene.
This isn’t to say those platitudes aren’t true or right or good or wise (I’d argue some of the earliest civilizations had a better grasp on mental health than we do now). Nor is it to say a certain platitude hasn’t served you well in the past.
No, these platitudes are true a lot of the time. But an equal amount of time, their opposite is just as true. Perhaps when we find ourselves stuck, holding on to a whisper of a rhyme, we need to embrace the power of the ‘Anti-Platitude’ — the mindful and creative inversion of an unquestioned personal truth.
Perhaps instead of “agreeing to disagree” (and then brewing in resentment), we should “disagree until we agree.” Maybe “good things come to those who don’t wait” as much as they come to those who wait. Maybe gain can be made without pain. Could it be that “there isn’t someone for everyone” but only perfectly mismatched others? Should we “worry curiously” when we’re told “don’t worry”? Should we say from time to time “I’m not special”, to remove the pressure we put on ourselves by everyone saying how goddamn special we are?
And does this go a little deeper?
“I’m always imagining the worst case scenario,” writes one submitter to ‘Thoughts For The Dark’, describing herself as a writer living with anxiety. What if I fail? What if this breaks? What if this relationship doesn’t succeed or my career tanks? Like many of us, her mind defaults to the most catastrophic picture.
But in those moments she’s slowly learned to embrace the equally valid inverse — “I try to remind myself that the best-case scenario can also happen, and that the future probably lies somewhere in the middle.”
All this is to say, platitudes aren’t the only things worth inverting.
There’s a lot we tell ourselves subconsciously that we’ve been telling ourselves for a long long time. That we’re shy. That the world is dangerous. That we don’t have a good imagination. That we don’t deserve love. That we’re in some form or another, a shitstain. Their repetition makes them unquestionable, automatic, invisible. To butcher a quote from David Foster Wallace, like fish in water these thoughts are hard to see because we swim in them every day.
Becoming aware of them is difficult. Questioning them feels weird and sacrilegious. Re-ingraining their inverse requires slow and steady repetition. But what world awaits us on the antipode of our habits? What sky is on the underside of our water? Or to put it less loftily, what if like Missy Elliot, we put our thang down, flipped it and reversed it?
The path forward could actually be upside down. By practicing a little curiosity and creativity, we might find new utility in the mindful inversion of our ingrained maxims, inner stories, and self-limiting beliefs.
We might realize that M&Ms melt, no matter where you put them.
