Positively Negative

The 1970s did us a grave disservice besides promoting powder blue and chocolate brown as a desirable color combo. The 1970s told us that negativity is bad. The 2000s did it again. I seriously doubt any economists read this blog, so you’ll have to forgo the geopolitical implications. The point is that negative was considered a bad thing to be.

Yes, yes, yes, of course “negative” means “bad” colloquially. Wait for it.

The problem is all those chirpy “look on the bright side” / “there are no problems, only challenges” people. Want to piss Auntie off? Use the word “challenge” when you mean that something is a problem.

When negative things happen, you’re forced to decide either that they don’t matter or to deal with them. Notice that I didn’t say “bad” just there. That’s to distinguish between an unfortunate situation and genuine misfortune, in much the same way that I would distinguish between being temporarily depressed and clinical Depression.

Not everything that happens to us in the course of an ordinary day is good. No matter how insignificant they are, when things that are not-good pile up unleavened by the tiniest bit of goodness, we can become negative. Those happy-go-lucky 1970s people would chide us for that. They would be wrong.

Negativity is a good motivator. Burning off anger or resentment can get you through a lot of chores you might otherwise procrastinate. Being negative can help you realize that most of what bothers you is irrelevant or trivial. Unless of course it does the opposite, in which case you’re more likely to address it than to let it all continue. Thus negativity becomes positive in effect. That’s a Birkenstock up the patootie of a perky 1970s person.

Think about it this way, what if we could channel PMS as an alternative energy source? Now that’s an idea with some serious geopolitical implications.

Anti-Mattering

Want to make someone feel good? Instead of telling them that you want to go somewhere or do something, tell them you want to go there or do that with them. If it’s not dirty – hell, even if it is— then you will have made their day. Because in the end, we really want to feel like we matter to someone.

Think about it. Fame, fortune and adventure are the traditional goals taught us through thousands of years of narrative. Once you get past survival, all of those can be reduced to a simple wish to matter. I’m trying to avoid using the late-last-century psychobabble here, because that vocabulary has become a joke. It trivializes what I think is a basic emotional need.

Okay, fine. I’ll say it. We want validation. (See my earlier post about being a parking whore, there’s got to be a joke in there somewhere.)

We don’t want to break down and spill our guts and then, only then, have someone remember an appointment for which they are late. That happened to me yesterday. It did not feel good. On top of my earlier distress, I was embarrassed and dismayed by my friend’s response. It was evidence that I don’t matter. To be fair, he really did just remember the appointment, and he really was late. That’s why we named my new punching bag after him. Still, even knowing that, the effect is the same.

The punch line is, when he got to the appointment, it turned out that it’s really next month. That doesn’t matter but it made me laugh.