Today the good news for me is that I found another topic to
talk about. Bad news for you is that the topic is “negativity”!
Negative things affect us more than positive ones. I was too
upset yesterday. I was mourning over the 6 rupees balance which I forgot
to collect from the bus conductor which he normally writes on the back of the
ticket for me to forget at the end the of the journey, which I promptly did!. Because
of that I just could not sustain my little appreciation for the good efforts of
the rather unusual careful driver in that state transport bus which made my
journey tension free.
Studies have revealed that 2/3rd of English words
describe negative aspects. That tells us the story. So if you find so many negative
words in this blog post then don’t blame it on me, the culprit is the English language!
We tend to look for negative items in a newspaper. Those
things attract us more. The other day I saw the headlines in the newspaper “7
tips to become happier in life”. Though I knew a couple of tips of my own, number
seven was a tall order for me. As I was about to look at tip #3 to tip #7, some
other headline caught my attention. It
read “Wife brutally murders husband”, I had no hesitation to read that first, I
just forgot all about the enhanced happiness and those tips for it. Not that my
wife is that cruel, for that matter she cannot kill even a cockroach fully!! Though there was nothing beneficial for me to learn about that murder, my
undivided attention went towards reading and absorbing that news, just because it was a negative one.
I read about a professor in Psychology who used to show his
students a black dot, drawn sufficiently large on a piece of white paper, first
day in his class. Then he would ask the students what they saw. All focus would
be on that black dot, everybody trying to interpret in his/her own way. One may
be thinking of amavasi day (new moon day)
when all bad things could happen. A well-read person would be reminded of that “black
spot” which would be handed over to the captain of a ship, a summon given as a
warning for impending and disciplinary action. (Black Spot is a pure fiction
created by R L Stevenson in his novel Treasure Island. How does it matter
whether it is fiction or reality as far as negativity is concerned! ). Then the
professor would say “Why are you people focussing too much on the black dot,
there is enough white space below that where you can write a poem or draw
picture, if you suddenly become artistic. Or you can even write a short love
letter, if the mood becomes romantic! ).
One might take good care while arranging a function, say
a wedding. Excellent program
management, planning to minute details so that the function goes on well and
the invitees are well taken care of. Almost all who had gathered will be pouring
congratulatory words on the host, for making the function a grand success. The
host will feel extremely happy. Then this is enough to feel terribly bad for
the host to hear from an odd old person
like this “Why these people should invite so many people with no planning? to make
me wait for the lunch behind somebody and witness him relishing his lunch”.
That one statement can wipe out a major part of the good things the host had
heard so far.
After talking negatively for this long time, is it not my
duty to tell something positive about negativity? I can positively say
negativity cannot be fully avoided. Then the option in front of us is to look
at the positive effects of being negative. And at times it helps us to do a
reality check and do course correction if required.
For instance this morning I set off with a positive frame of
mind, for my morning walk. I was about to cross the road at KFC traffic junction.
Less traffic, I was on the Zebra crossing for a change, the signal for pedestrian
turned green. I was all set to cross the
road, I saw a mini-bus approaching the signal from the right. If I had continued
to be a positive person, I would not have thought of anything bad, I would have
attempted to cross the road. Instead, those ugly thoughts came to my mind. ”What
if the driver ignores the stop signal? What if the bus does not have efficient
braking mechanism” ? “How would I look like if the bus knocks me down?”. These negative
thoughts made me stand-still and watch the mini-bus zooming past at very high
speed, luckily without taking me along with it for some good distance - "live or dead"!.
So, one may be negative at times and it could be for an advantage, but
never allow it to over-shadow the positivity.
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