The American Way

The American way George Saunders
Saturday May 19, 2007

Guardian

Readers of this column may suspect that I am one of those anti-America Americans. I'm not. I love my country, and feel there is much the British could learn from us Americans, namely me. For example, you could learn about the American ethic called Positive Thinking. When I was in your country last year, for the first time ever, I learned a lot about the British. The main thing I learned is that you people do not understand the concept of Positive Thinking. You're always intelligently discussing and considering and pondering and all of that, wasting valuable Action Time. Allow me to instruct you.

Say someone drives a steel spike through your head. Granted: a bad break. But why whine about it? All the screaming and weeping in the world is not going to cause that spike to work its way out. Why not say something positive, like, "Thanks so much for placing that super decorative accoutrement into my cranial region!" The spike is still through your head, but you're not depressing the people around you.

Or say someone steals your parking spot. What an American will do is respond positively, by cheerfully muttering, "Look on the bright side, maybe an hour from now a piano will plummet from that skyscraper and destroy that car from on high."

Or say someone, as a joke, for your birthday, uses a samurai sword to sever your torso from your lower half. What a positive approach to smile and exclaim, "I'm betting there are plenty of things in this universe that hurt a lot more!" Then get yourself stitched up and carry on with your day. There are good deeds to be done, things to be accomplished!

One must smile through adversity. For example, not long ago, I was late for work and trying to get on the subway. This was not altogether easy, because the spike through my head is slightly wider than the width of the train door, and when I turned sideways, the stitches in my waist gave way and my legs fell off.

I was momentarily flummoxed, but then my American brain, from its position on the floor near the snack machine, remembered the all-purpose Positive Thinking mantra. "It's all good!" my mouth exclaimed, as my torso pulled away on the train, waving to me with its foot.

I could see the salutary effect my positive attitude had on my fellow passengers. "It is all good!" they replied as one, except for some foreigner, possibly a Brit, who began to weep at the sight of me, and rather negatively called emergency assistance, bringing everyone down.

At that moment I became aware that something large was hurtling down from on high, headed for my exact position: a grand piano! "Wow," I thought, "it's going to be a super day."