Negativity

I was talking to my aunt over phone last week. As usual I asked, “how are you?”. 

“What to say, this terrible leg pain is killing me. I can’t keep my left foot down”.

I empathized with her “Oh, that’s bad. What is the reason?”.

“No idea, where is the time for me to go and check with the doctor. Let me perish like this”.

I realized things are not going as I wanted, so I tried to change the topic. “How is the weather there?”

“Better not to talk about that, it is winter, cold. That might be the reason for this sickening pain”.

I was in no mood to give up. “How are others especially the grand children?”

“They are the ones adding to my misery. I have to run around them so much that aggravated my pain”

I tried for the last and final time. “ What did you eat today?”

“That stupid kappa ( tapioca, staple food in Kerala ). It creates gastric problems throughout the body and adds to my horrible leg pain”.

I gave up.  I patiently listened to her “painful” story for another 10 minutes before I hung up.

My aunt was too much frustrated with her acute pain and that day she wanted to talk only about that.

I met Madhu, one of my friends a month back. In fact I was meeting him after 3 years or so. He just looked at me top to bottom, paused for a while and said “You are almost bald, you lost all your hair”.  He used to comment about my pot belly earlier. This time thanks to a bit of jogging and diet control I managed to make it less visible. This time one area where he could score over me was my head, as he was “growing” a larger belly than me, but he had much more hair than I did.

Madhu finds happiness in his strength areas, especially when he is able to point it out as a weak area to the other party.

I had to attend an important function at my home town last month. Since I came to know about that very late I could not get tickets by train. Flight was any way too expensive for me, so I didn’t bother to even go there. Only option left for me was then that famous multi-axle a/c night bus. Hearing this my friend told me, “Shenoy, be careful. You are aware of those fire accidents recently”. (What care can I take? The best I can do is sit awake in the bus throughout the night, close to the emergency exit glass window holding the heaviest hammer that I can! I am trying to visualize my posture for 10+ hours journey!!!)

My friend was so caring for me and trying to caution me.

I switched my job from a public sector company to a private one. I told my uncle about the change in my job, salary, life style etc ! He, who had been working for another public sector for many years remarked “Public sector would have been better, they are more stable. Don’t trust these private ones; they may shut shop any time”.

Uncle had strong perceptions based on his own experience and wanted to share it with me.

People say, try to avoid making friends who are negative. They can pull you down. I don’t agree with that. If a positive person understands why others talk negatively, what circumstances make them talk like that, then there is no harm.  He will brush aside some of these cynicism and move on, that is why he is positive. In fact the positive person can pull others out of their negativity.

So if you think you are too negative, look for the company of the positives. If you are positive, don’t change anything, maintain status quo.