Negativity. What is it? Is it anger? Frustration? Sadness? We hear a lot about the energy we bring into a room and the energy we bring to those who are around us. But are emotions other than happiness and joy and love truly negative? Just because we have an opposite reaction to them compared to that of joy and love, does it really mean that the emotion is negative? We are all, in some way or another, in the pursuit of happiness, fulfilment. But is to be happy always to be happy? Perhaps we have severely misunderstood what happiness, overarching life-consuming, happiness is. We disregard anger and jealousy for what they bring out in us, but we forget that the denial of who we are is the biggest obstacle in our path of happiness. It is the path of happiness, because happiness is not a destination, it is not an end point; life is an accumulation of moments, we don’t search for one moment of joy and then that’s it. So, what is negativity, and can someone be angry and still have a positive energy around them?
The Cambridge dictionary describes negativity as an attitude that is not hopeful or enthusiastic. We delve further into the negativity web and beg the question; can you be a hopeful and enthusiastic person but still have moments of hopelessness and apathy? Will a moment of distaste change who you are all together and therefore change your energy? We are more than what we say. We are what we think, what we feel, what we believe, I would even go as far as to say that we are the overarching energy that we give to people. In saying this, if we are in a foul mood and we meet someone in a brief and fleeting encounter, to that person, we are then, a person with a foul energy. Or are we? What is more powerful? A fleeting feeling or the full force of our overall emotions. In an ocean of yellow, can a drop of blue change us entirely? Will the people who are washed by our waves as they walk on the beach be painted yellow or green?
Anger tells us what we are passionate about, jealousy tells us what we want, sadness tells us that we love something enough to feel pain when it is no longer there. These “negative” emotions tell us more about ourselves, they are the silent evaluators that we overlook, yet they tell us the most about who we are. To be lost in self-discovery is the denial of one’s emotions.
In saying this, there are people and places that do have a negative energy, there are people we individually aren’t drawn to and tend to stay away from. So, what is it? What is at the core of negative energy and how do we keep it away from us, our loved ones, and our homes? The people we want to stay away from tend to be the ones we can’t trust. The people that look at us and we think, you would sell me for a bag of peanuts if you had to. To stay clear of negativity is by how you choose to treat people, how you choose to treat those that are not necessarily your favorite people, not victimizing yourself to think that you’ve been dealt a bad hand. Your external environment has a fleeting effect on your attitude, so why let it simmer and wallow in your life when that attitudes lifespan is only meant to be ephemeral. That’s where negativity come into play. We are drawn to those who show us empathy and kindness even when they don’t need to. A positive light shine from us when we treat people with justified kindness. Similarly, a negative light seep from us when we choose to treat people poorly simply because we believe it is in our right because we’ve been wrong. The only person who will wrong us is ourselves by letting the lack of empathy and kindness manifest into who we are. To act with empathy and kindness does not mean to be walked over, just because we are treating someone with the respect that they may or may not deserve, it is not up to us to decide if those around us are worthy; it is up to us to decide if we are worthy. We owe it to ourselves to be the best we can. As a society we are confused about what exactly is negative. Anger and sadness and frustration are not meant to darken our souls, when we analyze what we feel we can relish in everything that there is to be human. However, when we victimize ourselves and believe that we are better than the person next to us, the part of us that makes us mentally human; that humanizes us, diminishes. This tiny, unnoticing drop of blue in our ocean of yellow
will not take away our vibrant yellow hue, but a lifetime of tiny blue drops will; especially if they go unnoticed. Knowing that the tiny blue drops come from how we treat others and not from the anger we feel when we are wronged will significantly change our lives. We forget, that while some of us might be more inclined to work alone, we are in fact together. We praise our achievements and mourn our wrong doings. For one of us to succeed, we must all. We cannot progress if half of us refuse to move, that is not success, that is not our society making forward strides. That is a few individuals taking steps forward, and while some might be 40 steps ahead, the ones 80 steps behind play a part in where we are sitting as a society.
Negativity, the simple largest deterrent in ourselves, our interactions, and our homes.
