The negative aspects of Negativity

Bookends did a blog Friday about negativity; got me thinking.

I once worked with a guy who was the most negative human being I have ever met, besides my heartbroken self years ago, when I had to buy food with rolls of pennies, anyway, every time this guy spouted even the slightest negative remark it was as if he had sprayed all of us with a contagion.

It was easy to understand why he was so down on everything…I mean the guy was miserable, overweight, unhealthy, not particularly attractive, and he was rotting from loneliness. BUT this man’s childhood was one of great opportunity. His family owned a huge sailboat and he and his siblings spent their entire childhoods traveling around the world on that boat. He had stories to tell about Africa, the Panama Canal and almost every continent and shoreline there is.From that childhood he emerged, not as a well-traveled and world educated young man, but as a miserable whiner who sought to take all who were around him into the depths of his own despair.

After a particularly difficult day at work, which he colored as unbearable, I explained to him that…

WE LIVE THE LIVES WE WANT TO LIVE.

If we are miserable it is because we want to be miserable. Lonely, we are choosing it. Happy, friendly, positive people are happy, friendly and positive because that’s how they want to live their lives. He said if he was choosing the life he was leading, than he must have been crazy…duh…but actually, not crazy just stuck.

After a couple of years he left. Is he happy now, no not really, am I and my co-workers, yes, most of the time? What I learned by observing negativity is to not get caught up in its whirlpool of dragging observers under.

I am living the life I want to live, it’s not bad. Could it be better, sure, could it be worse, hell yes.

Well, with a smile on my face I will go back to rolling coins again, quarters this time. I need to put gas in my twelve year old minivan. I got wheels, I got gas money. Life is pretty damn good.