My wife has taken to lecturing me on being positive. I need to stop all the negative thinking and be compassionate.

I've begun to interpret that as refusing to react to pointless bullshit. If someone is open to compassion, reaction is justified. Otherwise any time invested is lost.

An underappreciated benefit of being over seventy is that much of the population, grandchildren specifically, are willing to cut you some slack. That is hard on our self-esteem, but they don't expect you to save the planet and your kids are happy if you just keep functioning.