Positively Charged

Do I love Eddy? He seems to truly love me. I envy his ability to throw himself so quickly and completely into something without worrying about what might go wrong. I love that about him. He's such a positive person.

Positive people used to make me sick. I would look at them with contempt and hope misfortune would crush their happy attitudes. Why did I feel this way? I was jealous, perhaps. Or maybe I hated myself so much that I wanted everyone else to be as miserable as I was. In either case, I am now living with and loved by one of these people, and I am thankful for it.

Often I find myself picking fights with him for no apparent reason. Other times, I rain negative comments on his sunshiney ideas. What is my problem? It's as if I am programmed to produce negativity at the first clear sign of optimism.

Why do I do this? Why does my mind automatically reject the positive? I may be able to explain by drawing a comparison to an experience we can all relate to: being a sore loser.

A few years ago I started playing an online version of a popular strategy game. At first, I rarely played against human opponents, preferring the game's computer drones instead. Why? Simple. Losing is terrbly upsetting. Watching the other players gain points as my score stayed put made me angry. In fact, it infuriated me. I would curse and type hateful messages and feel angry and rotten after losing. Many times, I would start another game immediately to try my chances again. Winning, on the other hand, produced the opposite effect. I would dance and celebrate and taunt the losing players with lines such as "Hahahahahahaaa!!!!", sometimes venturing into a full-on sermon of how I was able to triumph even while faced with my opponents' malicious tactics and inferior strategies.

Winning feels good; it boosts my ego and makes me feel that I am better, if only for a moment, than the people whom I have defeated. Losing, however, makes me feel inferior to them, and bursts the little bubble I live in where I am so great. This forces me to change my view of myself and accept that I am not so great, after all. This type of self-image restructuring can be avoided, however, if I avoid playing against people. Losing to the computer is much, much easier to swallow for some reason. Perhaps the old "I wasn't really trying" excuse it more viable here. In any case, the point is that I avoided playing people because I wanted to avoid losing.

Bringing this back to pessimism, the same basic principle appears to be at work here. Being negative, similar to avoiding human opponents, is actually easier than being positive, because you aren't risking that possible defeat that may be lurking around the corner. No, on the contrary, barring your path with negativity and excuses will keep your right where you are, out of harm's way. A positive approach, on the other hand, carries with it a sense of responsibility. If you are going to put something into motion, you are somewhat responsible for where it goes and what it becomes. It could be a failure, like losing the game, or it could be a success, as is winning the game.

This tendancy to always lean towards the negative is, then, seemingly no more than a refusal to accept responsibility and a fear or taking risks. But that still doesn't answer my question of why I think this way. Why my mind is on pessimistic auto-pilot. Is this normal? Are there more pessimists than optimists? Was I taught as a child to think this way? Or maybe my imagination is just better at visualizing negative outcomes instead of positive ones? Could that mean that, with a little practice, I could get better at thinking optimistically?

I don't know the answer to these questions, but I do know this: In the past year, I've been playing human opponents more and more often and have been steadily improving my game. A little success, it seems, could possibly be the key to turning myself onto the brighter side of life.