I know it’s a popular idiom these days. Become a bit of a cliché – ‘I’m a glass half empty sort of person’ and all that psychobabble but setting all that claptrap aside. I seem to have been dogged by people’s negative attitudes all my life and don’t it get you down? Nothings gonna empty your half glass quicker than a dose of negative pessimism and for me it centres on the preoccupation we have with filing. People love to put things in boxes, labelled boxes and then run the events of life, the people they meet, the situations encountered, whether good, bad, dramatic or surprising through a sieve labelled ‘MY PREJUDICED AND CONSIDERED VIEWPOINT’.

How many people have you met who truly try to keep an open mind when meeting life, people or events? We limit our perceptions to pre-judged, predefined conclusions.

Well I’m sorry to sound superior, arrogant or of an inflated self-importance but I don’t pre-judge and I make it a discipline not to label things, people or situations.

Every now and again however I admit, I lose that healthy mental ‘glow’ and succumb to rounding on anything, anyone and any situation that holds the smallest worm of negativity. Anything that’s not bright, full of promise or all-embracing I hate. Any viewpoint that is closeted, bigoted, xenophobic, myopic and rooted in tradition or what I call ‘ugly’ religion I reject and totally avoid any confrontation or dalliance with.

This makes me wonder are the negative Nellie’s and pessimistic Peter’s just people with a really great attitude who are just fed up meeting people with negative attitudes?

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writtenbyedenbray17.01.11

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This Essay posted as part of an #Edenbray retrospective and re-posted today for a new generation!

https://edenbray.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/negative-whats-negative/