Finding The Positive

It's easy to lose yourself in the negative, isn't it?

Ever noticed how bad news travels like wildfire, whilst good news seems by comparison to only be given a passing mention? How about times when we solve a nagging problem only to almost immediately move on to the next, without acknowledging and celebrating our success in coming to a solution? We're always thinking things like 'one less thing to worry about', as if worrying is some sort of essential skill, as if we need to worry, but rarely do we just stop and give ourselves a pat on the back. And how often, when asked that everyday question 'how are you' do we prefer to say 'not bad' rather than 'good'? Think about it..

It's almost as if we are averse to being positive..

Compare how much time and energy we humans spend on negative emotions and feelings, focusing on bad news and allowing problems to dominate our thinking, with the amount of time we contemplate and enjoy and celebrate the good in our lives - you'll almost invariably find that we seem dominated by negativity. We might think we are very positive people, and even find that others think of us as such, yet actually be just as wracked with internal doubts, consumed by fear and focused on negativity as the next person.

I write more on the subject of personal / emotional / spiritual growth - specifically on how we must learn to accept and deal with problems and pain in life, and live a genuine existence based on truth and reality - than anything else. I have touched on human nature before, that is, the features of our behaviour and thinking that are innate. I find myself questioning to what degree our tendency towards negative thinking is a part of human nature, and how much is in fact learned behaviour.

Here's a thought experiment.. what if you woke up one day with a blank slate in your mind. You're physically as you are now and mentally at the same stage of development, but with no memories, no preconceptions or presumptions, no biases etc. You are equipped with enough knowledge and reasoning to be able to function and understand yourself and the world, without any of the emotional and psychological baggage accumulated from the sum total of your past personal experience. What would you think of your life, humanity and the state of the world after one day? After one week? Can you imagine?!

Let's forget the obvious scientific flaws in this experiment and take it on face value. I would wager that in pretty short order you would be very confused and overwhelmed. With no emotional baggage to shape your thinking you wouldn't have a flawed and faulty perception of the world, preconceived ideas about how people and things operate, or presumptions about the nature and capabilities of other people or yourself - but you would have no memories of past events or how you dealt with them, no experience of your interactions with the world and other people and no knowledge of the processes involved in encountering and dealing with the problems and pain you have encountered.

My point is that human nature only accounts for a small fraction of why we think the way we do about ourselves, others and the world at large. The vast majority of our ideas about who we are, about other people and about how the world works are formed from our learned experience of life. How we are raised as children plays a large part in how we grow up to see ourselves (and others) as adults. The influences of our education system and exposure to the mass media and culture of our society affects how we think about our interactions with other people and the world in general.

By the end of adolescence most of us have formed a picture of our lives and even our 'place' in the world, based on what is basically a pretty narrow range of experiences. We certainly do not learn to accept problems and pain as a normal part of life, nor are we taught that hard work and legitimate suffering is essential in order to truly deal with our difficulties. We do not learn to form a real understanding of the suffering of others in the world either, nor do we start adulthood with anything like a balanced view of what it is to really live life well. These massively important lessons in life are not taught to us, nor marketed or advertised as desirable. As a result, one actually has to seek out the learning of these essential life skills, and this is compounded by the fact that we don't even know we need to look.

As I eluded to in my previous post about our pain-avoiding culture, we are force-fed images of perfection every day, told fairy-tales of living 'happily ever after' from a very young age, and offered quick-fix solutions to any and every kind of pain imaginable. Society, our culture, the mass media - all conspire to reinforce a picture of life and 'how we should be living' that is so far from the actual truth of our daily struggles that it is hardly surprising that we tend to see every negative thing down the track. This false, unbalanced, hyper-rosey reality gets its claws into us from day one. No wonder we see so much negativity in our lives, and fail to appreciate the truly positive.

By avoiding pain at all costs; seeing problems as purely negative things to be simply batted away without doing the work of learning the inherent lessons within, failing to strive for a genuine existence by discarding the lies we are told and the fake ideas about life we are subjected to, and not fully appreciating each and every positive that comes along, we are all doing ourselves the greatest disservice - long term we actually end up living a life of pointless, needless, unnecessary suffering. As age and bitter experience catch up with us, we eventually find ourselves realising we've been lost in negativity all along..



Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.

The Kids

Not so many years ago there was a prevailing poor attitude towards children. It was considered virtuous that 'children be seen and not heard'. It beggars belief that this was ever considered a good thing. The idea that children's opinions, their natural curiosity and ultimately their right to free speech should be stifled or silenced by anyone, let alone those charged with caring for them, is not just detrimental and damaging to them, but to society as a whole.

In reality, we have more to learn from our children than we can ever really teach them..

I am not advocating giving totally free reign to our kids. When making way for their voice leads to rudeness, lack of respect, unkindness and negativity towards others it is important to let them know this is unacceptable, and why. This kind of behaviour is born of a lack of understanding, so it is our jobs as parents, carers, teachers and responsible adults to explain to them why it is wrong and how to treat others with more respect and kindness. Discipline can and should be administered in a firm but fair way. Nurturing a child works. Castigating them does not. If punishment is necessary it must be carefully considered and serve the end purpose of teaching right from wrong without crushing the spirit of the child.

It is said often, by many, but predominantly those of the older generations, that children these days need old-fashioned discipline, as if that is the be-all and end-all of child rearing. I don't know what you think of when this is said, but in my minds eye an image of a school teacher with a cain and a parent with a belt is immediately conjured forth. Along with this I can hear the voices of various 60+ year old individuals chiming together, "if I was out of line I'd get a beating..it never did me any harm". Really? Well bully for you. Literally.

If we use physical punishment to enforce our will upon children, regardless of how 'naughty' they have been or how seemingly effective it might appear in the short term, all we are doing is normalising violence and teaching them that hitting people solves problems. The potential for this to become bullying, not to mention the multifaceted dangers of growing up with the notion that violence can solve our problems, is simply not worth it. Thankfully things have moved on a bit from the 'old school' days, but those who decry today's children as lacking in discipline, harking back to the 'good old days', are perpetuating the myth that fear of adults inspires respect and creates good character in children, when in reality it at best belittles, terrorises and crushes them, and at worst creates the kind of monsters who commit the most unspeakable acts in the world.

Violence against children doesn't just take physical form of course. The scars that can be created by domineering, emotionally abusive parents are perhaps even worse than the bruises that physical punishment administers. It is a tough tightrope to tread as a parent, knowing how to be firm without being too harsh, when to raise the voice just enough to tell them off without making them very unhappy, and knowing when subtle nurture is better than stern admonishment. Of course we want and need to be able to teach our kids right from wrong, respect for others and the importance of listening to those who know better than us, but doing it at the expense of their emotional well-being is tantamount to a crime against humanity. Society is unfortunately teeming with people with mental illness, psychopathy and criminality that directly stems from the shitty parenting they received in their formative years.

As adults we sometimes think we know it all, and of course we often know better than our children on a good many things. So much of what makes us who we are is learned by example, as children, from our parents. If we experience abuse, neglect, bullying and a lack of affection then it is hard to blame us if we become dysfunctional, difficult, destructive adults. We have to lead our kids by our own good example, showing them how to navigate the world successfully without stomping on others, and why it is important to lead a good life for the benefit of ourselves and the rest of the world, balancing personal growth and ambition with morality, humility and kindness. And the crux of the matter is that the whole time we are trying to control, dominate, force or crush our kids into complying with 'the rules' we fail to see and hear the amazing, incredible, wonderful contribution they make in our lives and to the world as a whole.

We truly have so much more to learn from children than we can hope to teach them; their wonder, their natural curiosity, their willingness to learn, their openness to change, their adaptability, their strength of character, their simple but elegant logic, their ability to soak up new information like a sponge, their dedication to those they love, the list goes on and on. Let us not fall into old patterns and ways of doing things that simply don't work, and don't help create a society of better humans than the past. Let us see the kids for what they really are - miraculous gifts of life, to be nurtured and guided on their journey to the best of our ability, so that we might leave the world a better place than that into which we were born.

"Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.


Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.