My last post, Pain and Suffering, focused upon the fact that in this world “Pain is inevitable, Suffering is optional.”

Now, let me digress for a moment. I have many friends who provide a blessing of insight into life. Of those friends I have two who are good about calling me on two very important factors that govern joy.

When they read that post both were pretty quick to call me on it. And I truly appreciate that. You see, my darker side tends to manifest in two very typical ways. You may find that you do the same, thus I am posting this follow up to that post and their insight.

I am typically outwardly a pretty upbeat person. However, internally and in how I speak about myself and situations I can tend toward negativity. My one friend continually tells me to stop beating myself up and the other points out quotes like “losing my joy in life” have a profound impact on my subconscious.

I am not, necessarily, one of those guys who will look at myself in the mirror and give myself an uplifting pep talk. I know that positive speak can be a good thing, but to be quite honest it is not something I would do.

Now, that said, I think there is a huge value in what my friends say about not beating oneself up and watching negative comments.

From a beating oneself up standpoint, if you are a person of faith, there is a fine line between beating yourself up and repentance. From a faith standpoint there should be some regret and repentance when we do something wrong. But even in this scenario for a person of faith there is forgiveness that we are extended but often do not extend ourselves.

Thus, we can tend to “beat a dead horse” (the horse being ourselves) until we are exhausted from the mental exertion. In both faith terms and in practical terms this does no one any good. It simply becomes cyclical thinking and feeling that has no out. So we must forgive ourselves first.

Second, is our choice of words. My other friend who is a master of positive speak is my conscious in this area. This is not to say that he is one to stand in front of a mirror (at least I don’t think he is) and talk positive words to himself. However, he is one to be very cautions to speak encouragement and truth. I respect him greatly for this.

And he is dead on! As my attitude degrades so does how I speak about myself and to others. My mouth is not in check, nor are my thoughts, and I can become very negative.

In that last post he reminded me of this and spoke to me after reading about how even saying that “I was losing joy in life” has such a negative impact upon my subconscious. Furthermore, as a man of faith, he reminded me that my joy is not found here on earth.

Too right!

I think it is well documented, whether you are a person of faith or not, that seeking joy on earth is a chasing after the wind, borrowing form King Solomon. If you take his example alone he had everything and tried everything and found after it all that it truly was only a chasing after the wind, that there is nothing new under the sun.

I am not going to get into a theological dissertation on the topic, because I think we have seen far too many examples outside of the Bible to validate this as well. Too many people who seemingly had everything but committed suicide or sunk into drug or alcohol to distract them from the hollowness of life.

Thus, I think my friends are on point here, as well as the premise of my previous post (without the negativity). Pain is inevitable, Suffering IS option, even in how we speak about the subject!

I want to thank them and my other friends who keep me in check in my writing and my thinking. This world can be a happy and beautiful place if we will but let it and not allow ourselves to sink into the prevailing darkness.

I am not discounting that we live in difficult times. However, I am saying that we are either a part of the solution or part of the problem.

Darkness cannot remain where there is light. If we shine on others, in word and deed, then we drive the darkness back. We become the positive in the negative and ever so slowly change the polarity.

If we think about it a moment this idea of changing polarity is something easily remembered and can be continually practiced. Are we being a positive influence, in word and deed, or a negative influence. I think if you ask most people they would want to be a positive influence. As such we simply need to change our polarity when we find ourselves slipping into the negative. Fire up the generator, plug into the outlet and be the positive instead of the negative.

Every situation in life has to be looked upon in only one of two ways; positive or negative. Now, you may say, how does one look upon pain, suffering, loss, bad things happening as positive. Well, it’s not easy. Not at all. I am currently facing some level of loss of vision in one of my eyes. This, as I noted in the previous post, was dragging me down mentally. But I was allowing it, I was fostering it. When my friend called me on my words and deeds and I spoke to a few others with far greater health issues it put it all into perspective for me. Typically a little dose of perspective helps us “see” much more clearly.

Changing polarity may not be easy, especially during difficult times. But it is the one thing we can control in uncontrollable circumstances.

This is crystal clear; we choose our perspective even when we cannot choose our circumstances.