Pollyanna and Mikhaila: A Meditation on Jordan Peterson’s Twelfth Rule for Life

Pet A Cat When You Meet It On The Street

Like Dr. Peterson, I am a person who loves dogs and cats. Except for the nasty dog who chased me when I was five, I have never met a dog with whom I was not instantly hail-fellow-well-met. It is a joy to watch my youngest becoming a dog person.  I’m also a cat person and have been since the stray Maine coon cat who adopted me as his humble servant when I was eleven. It is a joy to watch my eldest becoming a cat person. 

But just as the final chapter of Twelve Rules for Life, “Pet a cat when you meet it on the street,” is not about dogs and cats, neither is this meditation. The main theme of Chapter Twelve is nearly identical to that of Eleanor Porter’s 1912 children’s classic, Pollyanna. The core theme of both this chapter and that book is that the unshakable belief in the essential goodness of existence is an anchor of the soul in the face of intractable pain, either our own or that of a loved one. 

Like Dr. Peterson himself, Pollyanna is one of the most wilfully misunderstood characters in the history of time. “Pollyanna” has become synonymous with a wilfully blind, naive, foolishly optimistic person, who pretends that life is all sweetness and light. I will not dignify what Dr. Peterson has unfairly become synonymous with.

I notice that everyone who uses the term “Pollyanna” disparagingly has neither read nor understood the text, just as those who disparage Dr. Peterson have neither read nor understood him. I have read and understood both. 

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Pollyanna, like much of children’s literature, carries a message that might be too difficult for old and wise adults to get their arms around: that although this life is a vale of tears, there is always something for which to be grateful, thankful, and, yes, “glad.”

Although it is subtitled “The Glad Book,” Pollyanna does not shrink from portraying the cruel realities of this life.  The death of our dearest ones will leave us desolate and awake at night in floods of tears, that broken and embittered hearts may be closed against our own love-starved heart, and that an innocent child who did nothing to deserve her fate will be rendered bedridden and in constant pain, facing a lifelong disability. 

Like Pollyanna, the twelfth chapter of Twelve Rules for Life does not shrink away from the cruel realities of this life. Dr. Peterson tells the story of his own daughter Mikhaila’s decades-long life-threatening illness and pain and disability. It is an account I cannot read without tears.

Like Pollyanna, Mikhaila was a happy child who suffered up to and perhaps beyond her human capacity for endurance, but who never lost faith in the goodness of life and her own ability to help make life better for others. 

The suffering of the innocent is enough to shake the faith of the most devout believer. The great tragedy of Pollyanna, the “all is lost” story beat, is not when she receives the news that she may never walk again. 

It is when she, the “little prism girl” who has lived her life trying to bring gladness into the lives of her neighbors and friends, finds that she can no longer be “glad.” Her friends freely express in words and tears their incomprehension of why the world can be so cruel. 

Dr. Peterson argues that the world is not made of matter; it is made of what matters. And if pain is the most real thing in the world, what is more real than pain? The answer is the core theme of both Rule Twelve and Pollyanna: Love. Love is the only thing that is more real than pain. We don’t know love is all we need until love is all we’ve got. Love will sustain us through the pain. I write these words with the conviction of someone who has been thus sustained. 

Pollyanna is written as variations on a theme of the four hundred texts from the Bible that command God’s people to “be glad, and rejoice, and in everything, give thanks.” Joy and rejoicing is not a self-centered effervescent jollity like an explosion of soda pop.  Joy and rejoicing is the overcoming of sorrow and suffering. Overcoming does not mean denying the depth of the suffering but coming out of the battle with more than one had going in. 

Pollyanna’s gentle wisdom and tireless optimism inspired the love that would sustain her in her hour of need. From a physician worn and weary from seeing suffering every day, to a minister worn and weary from pastoring a recalcitrant flock, to an embittered Aunt Polly worn and weary from many years of loneliness, to an old hermit worn and weary from many years of only riches to keep him company, Pollyanna had touched lives and taught closed hearts to open. As a result, she was surrounded by friends who cared for her and loved her in her hour of need. 

Like Pollyanna, Mikhaila has been sustained by the love of her family. She has made life immeasurably better for countless people through her work on her podcast, her public talks, and her body of research into the health problems that nearly claimed her life. 

The age-old question of the begetter of life, “Is it well with the child?” is finally answered with a triumphant and joyous “It is well!” in both Pollyanna and “Pet a cat.” Pollyanna learned to be glad again and through the miracles of medicine, was healed and able to walk again. Mikhaila learned through years of research what was making her sick and is now, after a terrifying incident with black mold, in remission. The pain is, mercifully, in the past.

From my own experience of beyond-my-limits suffering, I can testify to the truth of this: when we are in the thick of the pain, we can always find one small thing to be glad about. We can pet a cat when we meet it on the street. And thus, we can sustain the belief in the fundamental goodness of existence that will save our reason in our darkest hours. 

Author’s Note: I hope you have enjoyed my Twelve Rules for Life series. This is the final article. I encourage you to check out the other articles in the series. I will be taking the rest of the summer off to work on a bigger writing project and will be back in the fall with a series of essays on Beyond Order: Twelve More Rules for Life!