Pia K. Hansen: Complaining about negativity won’t help matters

On a fall Saturday morning, right after I’d been offered this column, I was at a coffeehouse.

A neighborhood shopping tour was in progress, and in honor of all the females swarming to the South Perry neighborhood, this coffeehouse was giving away free chair massages.

I’m not much of a public massage person, but considering it had been a horrid week, I straddled the chair in the middle of espresso drinkers, babies and knitting groups. With Peter Gabriel crooning in the background, I surrendered my rock-hard shoulders to the massage therapist.

You’re kinda facedown in these chairs, so I couldn’t see what was going on around me. It was a perfect time to eavesdrop on the coffee crowd, as my back got a badly needed pounding.

The truth is I eavesdrop all the time. I think it’s a work-related injury – being a reporter will do that to you.

So, I listened to the laughter and talk, the dogs barking outside and the sound of the espresso maker, altogether having a great time.

And that’s when I heard a man say, “What’s wrong with Spokane is all the negativity.”

I wasn’t feeling especially negative at the moment, but someone else mumbled their approval.

“I get so tired of the negativity,” the guy continued, loudly.

It’s a statement I’ve heard hundreds of times since I moved here in 1993. It seems to have universal political appeal: Libertarians, Republicans, Democrats, Greens – I’ve heard it from all of them. Soccer dads have said this to me. Businesswomen have repeated the same thing. College students and their professors say it.

It’s become Spokane’s unofficial refrain.

In response I usually shake my head gently and say something like, “Hey, I hear that a lot.”

But in my backrub happy state I thought to myself: If you say Spokane is too negative, you are by extension saying that other places like Chicago or Indianapolis or Saratoga are not too negative.

That everywhere else everything is upbeat and great – it’s just here in Spokane we are slow and depressed.

You are implying that people who live in, say, Memphis, jump out of bed early with big silly grins on their faces. They drink only fair-trade coffee before they leave their beautiful, environmentally friendly townhouses and head to work in a vibrant downtown, where they all hold high-paying creative jobs in low-impact, high-tech companies that employ diverse work forces. Everyone has a 32-hour workweek, of course, with 40-hour pay. There’s onsite day care and free massage appointments. And they smile joyfully all day before they stop by yoga on the way home to their organic, locally grown dinner.

We all know that everybody in Boise and Seattle lives just like that and that it’s us losers here in Spokane who can’t get it right, and that’s why this place is too darn negative.

For crying out loud, give me a break.

We have a lot of good things going for us here, compared to so many other places in the country or the world. It’s possible to buy a house or rent a decent apartment here without being a millionaire; our downtown offers a variety of shops, restaurants and bars; we have easy access to skiing in the winter; and you can still find access to public beaches in the summer.

Is this place perfect? Hardly: It’s human nature to always seek room for improvement.

The one thing we can’t seem to get right is the difference between drawing attention to a problem and being negative.

You are not being negative when you point out that there are potholes that ought to be fixed, or poor people who need food, or a dirty river that should be cleaned up, or kids who need to learn how to do math. You are simply being a realist.

Think about it this way: If you tell your dad that the plumbing in the basement is leaking, he’s not going to accuse you of being overly negative; he’s going to thank you for pointing out the problem so he can make plans to fix it before the house floods.

Here’s to a happy and positive new year.