Truth be told this thought scares me. It really fucking scares me.
This fear is not misplaced seeing as
- I have no desire to continue my education
- The job I want requires me to be voted into a position already filled by someone who is more than competent at what they do by some rather fickle students
- My only career plan is to work in a very unstable industry
However justified this fear may be it still has a noose-like grip around my throat and for the first time in a long time I'm actually beginning to feel the changes.
I'd like to think that I abide by the philosophy of "Be the change you want to see in the world" but I'm sure we'd all like to think that and quite frankly I'm going to admit that this just isn't the case most of the time. Sure you get people who do altruistic things and who believe that if that old lady or man couldn't cross the street they'd help but seriously how many people actually do things like that. I mean seriously think about it, how many times have you walked away from something and realised later that this was your chance to shine? It's probably more times than you'd like to think and right now you're probably justifying it in your head with "but I was in a hurry" or "my bag was really heavy" or some crap like that. I'm going to point out right now that there's not really any justification that makes it ok unless you're happy to admit that you're not all that bothered about helping people cross the street. (Which I believe is a selfish but ok point of view, but that's a different discussion for a different time.)
I'm going to stay it. You don't want me to but I'm going to say it. STOP PRETENDING. Shall I put it in bold? STOP PRETENDING! Does that help get the message across? I hope it does because one of the things that's worse than not doing good deeds is pretending you do good deeds.
Now before you get all offended and storm off in a huff I'm going to openly admit that I've spent a good portion of my life pretending. I've been there. I've been there with the good deed all planned out in my head and I've walked right on past the opportunity. Of course admitting it doesn't serve to do anything except make me feel better but here's the thing; if the first step in conquering a problem is admitting that it's a problem, then well I guess I'm on the way to conquering this "problem".
Now recently I took a trip into my own mind and had a good, long look at myself, my actions and the way I acted within this world. Aided by a fantastic and moving blog-post by Amanda Palmer (here) and a few infuriating Facebook updates I stumbled upon the notion that negativity begets negativity. Now of course it's something that seems quite a simple concept to grasp on the surface but once you start digging a little deeper it becomes more difficult to grasp. In light of this I'm just going to leave the phrase here, in bold, with its own paragraph so you can have a think about it.
Negativity begets negativity
Done? All right. Lets de-construct this.
So we all get what "negativity" is right? (If not then google is your friend)
And if we take "begets" to mean "breeds" or "to bring about" then surely this phrase should be really simple to understand.
Negativity brings about more negativity. In other words, anything negative causes more negativity to spread and thus a near infinite cycle of negativity is born. Right? Surely it's that simple? I'm not so sure.
I mean of course the phrase itself is that simple (and can be de-constructed no further) but it's what we do with that phrase that isn't so simple. As humans we take simple phrases and try to find a far more complicated phrase buried beneath it. That phrase might be something like "actively doing negative/horrible/terrible things will cause more people to do horrible/negative/terrible things and this is bad" and this definitely does seem like a logical response that most people would have but from a purely lexical level the phrase has now been distorted from it's original meaning.
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if you're stating to yourself that you don't do negative/horrible/terrible things and scratching your head as to why the distortion of the phrase makes it any worse.
I'll put it this way. You might not do negative/horrible/terrible things and you may not even say negative/horrible/terrible things but chances are you've thought them. That's no crime though and I'm sure you're still probably wondering what I'm wittering on about so I'll explain further. Just because something isn't said out-loud or acted upon doesn't make it go away.
Here's another way of looking at it... If I leave an open can of beans in my kitchen it will eventually grow mould. The more mould that grows the faster it will grow mouldy and the more dangerous the beans become to eat. Plucking out one or two mouldy beans after the first signs of mould could save most of the can, if you have to throw away half of it, it's probably best not to even think about eating the rest. Now at this point the mould hasn't done anything except grow. It hasn't made me ill, it hasn't killed me, it hasn't spread, it hasn't started annoying me with bad puns, all it's done is grow. Now if I were to leave it there long enough and leave a slice of bread next to the can eventually the bread would become mouldy and eventually the mould would spread from one to the other.
"But I never let my negativity get that bad" I hear you cry. I call bullshit. You never intend to let your negativity get that bad but like helping old ladies cross the street it's something you wish you had more of a handle on and can "explain away" really easily.
Negativity is like mould. It grows, and grows, and grows and if you don't do anything about it, it eventually spreads. Now of course it spreads a lot faster and does a lot more harm if it comes into contact with anything.
Say for instance my housemate doesn't realise my beans are mouldy and decides (stupidly) to eat them (lets just pretend they're eating them cold and aren't looking, so don't see the mould). This would send the mould right into their stomach and would probably either make them throw up and/or become quite ill. Do you see where this is going? No? Let me spell it out for you.
Negativity is the same as mould, it will grow and grow and grow and regardless of whether someone comes into contact with it, it will spread.
So we've established that negativity breeds more negativity and along the way we've (hopefully) understood that this isn't a good thing. But what next? I mean this is already coming off as preachy but without a solution it's just going to go downhill right?
This is the point where I point out that every coin has two sides. If negativity begets negativity then surely positivity begets positivity.
Well yeah, that makes logical sense.
Unfortunately though here comes the difficult part. You might be thinking along the lines of "well I'm a generally positive person, I have my up days and my down days but I get along being mostly positive" and you'd be in the majority to think that your life was as such. Unfortunately though the reality is usually a little more harsh than that. Think about it. Really, think about it. How many times have you posted a Facebook/Twitter status about how pissed of you are at 'x' or how 'y' is a bitch but you're going to struggle on regardless. It's probably a large number.
That is ok though. I mean it.
It's ok.
We all do it.
It's like we've been bred as a society to respond negatively to everything (and no adding a positive clause at the end does not banish the negativity).
I have no idea where this negativity comes from but I'm goddamn sure we're not helping ourselves at all by wallowing in it. Currently we're rolling around like pigs in dirt, swimming in negativity and telling ourselves it's all ok because we know that we're grateful for our lives and that whilst 'z' might be bothering us everything's really hunkey dorey. The problem is, is that by telling ourselves everything is ok we're making it more and more ok to wallow in negativity and thus the near-infinite cycle of negativity continues.
We genuinely need to stop telling ourselves that despite 'w' everything's ok and just tell ourselves that everything's ok.
Case in point. The other day I was about to status update on how stressed I was about revising for exams but that it was ok because I have an amazing girlfriend and a fun night ahead of me. Then I stopped for a second. I deleted what I'd just written and in its place I put "I have an amazing night ahead of me with the woman I love" and right there everything changed. The revision didn't go away. Neither did the stress about exams. But in that singular moment revision and exams were no longer a problem because I had something so fantastical to look forward to that stress wasn't even on my list of things to think about.
"But how can it be that simple?" you cry. Trust me I haven't worked that one out yet but who cares, you just have to believe me when I tell you it works and put it into practise.
Negativity begets negativity.
So stop it. Stop it right in its tracks. Right now.
Delete that negative status update, delete that cruel blog/youtube/twitter comment and change it to something positive.
I dare you.
Peace
xx
Quote of the day: Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. - Martin Luther Jr.
Song of the day: John Lennon - Give peace a chance
