Negativity Positivity

The thing is, the world these days is full of negativity and (a little) positivity.

It's a question of whether the glass is half empty or half full syndrome. Personally, I don't care which it is as long as it does not leave a stain on the table. Sometimes those stains can be difficult to get off and if you use a spray cleaner you are releasing various bad things into the atmosphere which you are likely to breath in and possibly kill you ... in time ... maybe ... perhaps ... or give you some disease or other that the researchers have yet to discover, and make you worry about it even more in order to add more negativity to your life.

Wherever you turn these days there is someone warning you in a negative way how things are bad and are about to get worse.

You are warned on what to eat, not eat, do and not do, wear and not wear, and so on and so forth thus proving that you have been doing it all wrong all this time; and you are doomed anyway; and why are you not dead yet, because you should be considering the way you have been living so far.

For example, there was a time when we were told to eat five a day. This means five portions of fruits and vegetables a day. This is good for you. Avoid read meat, bacon, carbohydrates, fatty foods, alcoholic drinks, smoking, and most important of all do not eat plastic bags and plastic containers because they do bad things to your insides.

Now I read a latest research report that says drinking fruit juice, including freshly squeezed fruits, is bad for you because of its sugar content and it will make you ill and cause early death.

Everything seems to point towards the fact that whatever you do is wrong and will harm you and most possibly kill you.

So I advise you that if you are absent-minded do not take up parachute jumping as a hobby because you are more likely to kill yourself this way.

Perhaps I should take up smoking because I am sure sooner or later some research scientist will discover that smoking is in fact good for you.

What we need in this world right now is a bit more positivity to counter-balance all this negativity that is around. Positive thinking is good.

Whether it is political issues, economic matters, health questions, the environment, air quality, climate change or whatever else, there are always too many people peddling negativity to make us feel worse than we really are.

A friend of mine has become such a hypochondriac that he has made arrangements that when he dies he will be buried next to a doctor just in case!

When I told my friend, the psychiatrist, about all this negativity, and the fact that I had discussed it with my wife, he reminded me that he was a psychiatrist, and that his wife was a psychiatrist too. He suggested a group therapy session with him and his wife, with me and mine. I thought about it. To be honest, I am rather uncomfortable about having another man and his wife in bed with me and my wife. What kind of therapy is that? Is it positive, do you think? And will the bed be big enough?

Real positivity on the other hand is good for you. It makes you feel good and happy when in reality the situation is rather crappy. But you don't know about it; so why should you care?

A positive attitude is to feel that when one door shuts another one will open ... possibly outwards and it will hit you in the face; but then ... it's positive is it not?

Being positive is not bothering whether you have clean underwear because if you are run over by a bus it is the last thing the ambulance people will be concerned about. They'd be more concerned if you wore no underwear at all ... but then why would you want to do that unless it is to air your personality. That's positive; is it not? We should all air our differences every now and then.

Having a positive attitude encourages others to have the same positive attitude and it is contagious and makes everyone else feel better about themselves and their situation. Even though we are all falling off a cliff like lemmings. Have you ever met an unhappy lemming? No? That's because they are all positive even though they have nothing to be positive about.

Being positive encourages hope. Encourages mutual courage. Encourages the get-up and go attitude that we all need these days instead of sitting on our backside bemoaning what used to be and how it is now no longer so.

In a research conducted in an old peoples' home the elderly were asked, "What thing in life would you like to have done less?" Most of them said they should have worried less. They should have been more positive about the fact that one day they'll grow old and their families will leave them in a retirement home.

As Mark Twain said, "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened".

Or as Groucho Marx put it, "Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself; I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it".

Personally, I prefer to quote myself, "Do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow has already happened in Australia."

But then ... I am not appreciated in my own time. Perhaps not appreciated at all really.