Hal - Deliberately Basic

Thirty spokes meet at a nave;
Because of the hole we may use the wheel.
Clay is moulded into a vessel;
Because of the hollow we may use the cup.
Walls are built around a hearth;
Because of the doors we may use the house.
Thus tools come from what exists,
But use from what does not.

From “Tools” in the Tao Te Ching

Once upon a time, I worked in the same office with a man who would find something good in Nazi death camps or torturing puppies if these subjects happened to come up. I don’t know if this rose-colored attitude is developed, or innate. I suspect a little of both is involved. Either way, a pollyanna can drive me to the brink of insanity with that seeming inability to see anything except idealistic notions.

A positive, realistic outlook on life in general is a good thing, as long as you are not blind to a very basic fact of life. There can be no good without evil. Life is about positive and negative, yin and yang. Positive and negative balance each other. Therefore, negative is not necessarily a bad thing, it simply is.

Back to the fellow in the office who could see no evil. Regardless of what was going on, he walked into the office every morning and said, “Good morning everyone! What a beautiful day it is today.” On one particular morning, there was what some deemed to be the worst thunderstorm in the history of the state, perhaps even the world. And he entered with his usual smile and sunshine salutation.

Now, imagine a group of people who are not quite awake, sipping coffee, groggy, shuffling paper, trying to get oriented with the tasks of the day. His greeting invariably drew negative response, usually in the form of expletives even I wouldn’t repeat. On occasion, he was hit with something, or several things at once. Paper weights make excellent projectiles.

For years I have cursed and damned Norman Vincent Peale for embedding in the American psyche this dogma of positive thinking. Failing to see both sides of a situation can lead to wishful thinking, and in some cases disaster. An absolute positive thinker is, in my mind, not much different than an absolute negative thinker. Absolutism is radical, and radical thinking can lead to false premises. In other words, you may think something to be true, but that doesn’t make it so any more than thinking something is false. But, what about attitude?

Would that we all could maintain a good, positive attitude, even in the most dire circumstances. I have never met anyone who could do that. An example: Your mother dies. Will you walk in the door of the funeral home with a sunny smile and talk about how great it is she is gone? Of course not, unless you are a nut-case, or hated your mother. How will you react to the awful things in life such as this?

If you are like most people you will go through the various stages of grief, anger, a little depression, and finally acceptance. Even a die-hard pollyanna can see that not all this is positive. It is, however, balanced. You have made the journey through a valley to reach higher ground. What is the best lesson to be learned from this?

Tolerance. If you have a friend or relative who is having a hard time of it, do you bombard him or her with the positive thoughts and solutions about the situation? Do you point out “…remember the good times you had…” or some such drivel? Or, do you have the common sense to commiserate with him, show that you understand, and acknowledge his reality? Sometimes the best way to help someone is a simple, “Wow, that sucks.”

Whether you are blind to the negative pole, or blind to the positive pole, you are blind.

As a final thought, when I was growing up, it was alright to talk about negative things at home. A bad day at school, the dog died, my mother hated the woman next door, my father had a hard day at work, were all subjects that could be openly discussed at the dinner table. Looking back, I now realize that releasing all that negative energy out in the open, dispersed into the ether, minimized it, and there was not much left except the positive energy. I always felt a little better after dinner.

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