Negative Positives

One of the most negative things that Life can bring upon you is a lecture on positive thinking. I could take all the insignificant to moderate misfortunes I have been through, amplify them a hundred times and still choose to go through all of it than listen to a rhetoric about Positive Thinking.
It is such a cliché and it always comes at the wrong time.
It is like asking a famished guy not to eat when he is surrounded by finger licking cuisines from all over the world.

Talking about Positive Thinking is so empty. I have been at the transmitting end of such lectures many a times and I must confess publicly that I get really angry with myself when I do that. When a person is low and you are not, uttering sentences like, “Look at what you have! Be grateful for the good things in your life” is like eating paper. I know and they know that it means nothing to them. They just listen to it because they are too tired from crying or getting mad to ask me to shut up.
When I am at the receiving end, I usually put myself on the screen-saver mode and just sit around trying to think about stupid things.
It is easier to laugh at your miseries than try and find positive things that are bigger than them when you are inside them. :)

To make it worse, people don’t come up with creative lines. They keep telling us about sunlight, horizons, hares and tortoises and famous people who have gone through a lot more (which I am sure I will never go through making me feel a bit small in the misery department).
It takes me by surprise that when I am traveling, I find people genuinely immersed in books titled “How to turn failure into success” or “ How to win friends and make them happy” “ The power of consistent positive thinking” “ How to shed twenty pounds in three weeks and think positive”!

Sometimes it has the exact opposite effect on me. The sheer intensity of the lecture and the dimensions of all the goodwill and happiness that I am in the process of ignoring when I am being low freaks me out! I run away from it. Like when it is too sunny, you go out wearing a 20 SPF sun block, shades and staying inside the car for as long as you can, sometimes too much sunny thinking does that to me.
You come home exhausted and miserable. Contemplating on how hard you work, how meticulously you plan your day and how you don’t even have the liberty to eat whatever you want. Then there is an added grief of your unwanted upcoming birthday to remind you of all the things you still haven’t done. In such tender woeful moments I would rather wear pajamas and socks and eat low-fat chocolate chip ice cream. Such moments are to be treasured. When even the most ambitious, rich and the breathtakingly beautiful people feel like big zeroes. They are philosophical moments.
Moments of truth that bring us face to face with a lot of things we choose to deny in crowded places. Where you begin to analyze the situation and develop defense mechanisms!

Then suddenly out of nowhere someone comes down on you and paints a big happy rainbow all over the room! With out-of-place blobs of reds, violets and indigos!
I know that the oceans of sadness are deep, but then the skies of hope are just as limitless. Somewhere between the two, Reality floats. Most of us miss it. We either dive too deep or fly too high.

I like to ease into those low moments and then wake up the next day and go into my running shoes. On a serious thought, the only positive thing about being low is that you realize that you have been through it before and it was okay. Maybe you will be there again, but it will be okay too! If you just wait around quietly without letting the Churchills and the Nehrus lead you to the path of a million dazzling Suns you make a gentle curve for yourself and get back on the smooth, steady baseline.
And there is nothing really as good or as bad as our minds can imagine. :)
So next time any of you get that unsolicited ranting lecture on Positive Thinking from me, please ask me to read this post!