The Negative Attracts The Positive

I have been mulling over the difference between positive thinking and negative thinking again.  While this doesn't sound too productive it is an improvement on my normal mulling process: thinking negative thoughts exclusively.  There's a sign on around my neck that reads: "Management reserves the right to refuse service to anyone thinking positive thoughts."  I considered just tattooing it on my forehead instead of going through the daily ritual of putting out the sign when I wake up and taking it back down at the end of the day, but I'm afraid of needles.

I think that a lot of people who dwell on the negative with the ferocious intensity I see often in The Fellowship have a little something in their make-up that predisposes them to veer toward the Dark Side.  I think it's fair to say we have some crossed wires and chemical imbalances that drive us to think negatively.  I can have 20 things going on, 19 of them good, and that one bad thing consumes my thinking more often than not.  I'm the guy who can't stop touching the sore tooth with my tongue.  I have a mouth FULL of good teeth which I could care less about, preferring to explore the bad one until the pain goes from minor to considerable to agonizing, and still I don't stop probing.  I must be comfortable with the pain.

But a lot of us were raised in an environment where the negative is emphasized.  I recall a quote from a German philosopher, Schopenhauer -- a happy lot, generally, the Germans, especially old philosophers -- that I'm sure I'm butchering but implies there isn't an idea so stupid that it can't be driven into the head of a child by repeating it over and over, with great solemnity, as they grow up.  I know that if I won $50 million in the lottery, which I hope to do despite my aversion to buying lottery tickets, my mother would say: "Oh, boy, the taxes are going to kill you, and then you'll probably lose half of it to all the criminals out there, and then you'll invest unwisely the pittance that's left and probably die penniless and alone."

She's probably right, in my case.