Selecting The Negative

Many of us have an interesting internal screen that seems to keep out positives but lets in negatives. When someone compliments them, they discount the compliment as a perfunctory courtesy, and erase it from their memories quickly. But if they are criticized, the memory of that hurt lingers. They replay the criticism in their minds and can still read it word for word years later.

Some minds are so constructed that they can only find the negative interesting. They note all deaths and rapes and swindles and what is wrong with the world, while ignoring beauty, good fortune, and multiple illustrations of love and laughter around them.

A friend of mine, who is a happy soul if there ever was one, tells about trying to spread some good cheer to a melancholy cabdriver who picked him up at the Indianapolis airport.

             “It’s a gorgeous day out here in Indiana,” my friend said.
             “You should have been here yesterday,” said the cabbie. “It was terrible.”
             “You know, the autumn leaves are gone in Maryland, where I live, but your trees are still beautiful. I’m glad I came this week.”
             “These leaves will be gone in three or four days.”
             The fellow was so resolute in his gloom that by this time he had become a challenge. My friend looked out as they passed the Indianapolis Speedway and asked, “Isn’t this the Indianapolis Speedway?”
            “Yep.”
             “I’d sure like to see the race here some Memorial Day.”
              “I wouldn’t go near it.”
              “Why not?”
            “I’d rather watch the horses run.”
             At last my friend thought he’d discovered something the man liked. “Ah, you go to the track, then?”
             “Nope, I never go. Too expensive.”

How is it that many of us, like the cabdriver, get into such negative patterns? Largely by habit. Pessimism and hopelessness become almost a knee-jerk reaction. Our melancholy reactions, like twitches, become so instinctual that we do not realize how blind we have become to the good around us.