Ever since the Corona Epidemic, I had received this forward from at least 2 dozen people, if not more…

Stay away from Negative people

Stay away from Positive people

and it bothered me, annoyed me and to a certain extent even perturbed me…and again not the first time, that  I had heard of the concept of positive and negative people, it’s almost categorising one as the GOD and the other as the DEVIL…is there someone, who is truly positive and someone truly negative???

Are we all not Grey and all shades of grey in between???

and therefore the concept and culture of “enforced positivity”  in the recent past has been somewhat unsettling for my emotions…for its almost absolute disregard and disgrace for the complete spectrum of human emotions and thoughts…

I believe, most people who have the knowledge of basics physics and math would agree, that everything is made of 2 opposing charges, energy fields, polarities…the positive charge and the negative charge…and though in reality these are just counterbalancing charges/energy fields, polarities (just like the seesaw)… we as humans for our relative yet rational understanding, have compartmentalised them into positive and negative charges, and have quite dysfunctionally, undermined the essence of one… and overestimated and overrated the essence of the other …for instance, would we ever understand the concept of tall without the concept of short, of cold without the concept of hot, of dark without light, of fat without thin, of fast without slow, of sweet without the salt and sour, of pleasant without the foul… so on and so forth…

But what if we could not categorise them as 2 opposing polarities, but rather see them as complementary, necessary balancing polarities…will we still label them as positive and negative???

Unfortunately, the rigid notion of being positive, staying positive, has removed most of us from our true normal natural emotions…that we at times don’t even acknowledge and recognise them…

In fact, as I was listening to this podcast by Jay Shetty, I was fascinated, when he mentioned that in the surveys conducted by Harvard University, it has been found that for the past many generations, we have not evolved in our emotional vocabulary… if anything we have stagnated or even devolved…we have a huge dictionary on our IQ, but very little to speak about or EQ ??

for instance…

When asked, “How are you??”…98% people say “I’m fine or I’m good”…do we hear people say “I’m feeling blissful…I am content…I’m feeling joyful…I’m feeling happy, I’m feeling purposeful…I’m troubled, right now…I’m Sad, right now…I’m heartbroken, right now…I’m Grumpy, as of now…I’m annoyed, as of now…I’m feeling disconnected…I feel empty…” and it can be so much more… and yet we are so limited, so confined, so restricted…almost caged !!! “I’m fine and I’m good does not even feel like a response, but more like a reaction”…

“What do you do???”…most people often describe themselves in context to their work/job…How often do we hear people say…”I Live and I play and I’m trying to be a human and not remain a human being”…yes we can definitely answer, what our work profile entails, if and when asked, “what do you do for a living”…but, Are we not more than our job titles, more than our accomplishments, more than our busy schedule???…

How often do we ask people or how often have we been asked, “What are you passionate about… What makes you come alive… What is it that creates meaning in your life???”

and no wonder, when we stifle and choke down our uncomfortable, uneasy, messy and yet Normal Natural Emotions, we fail to evolve, we fail to grow for we fail to live…

and as Susan David puts it…

“The desire to not feel pain, to not be hurt and disappointed, to not have trust broken, to not be rejected and feel dejected…is the Goal of Dead People”… for Living beings realise, understand and embrace their own fragilities and the fragilities of life…for that’s where the beauty of life resides…

Only if we can acknowledge, realise and accept, that in our contract with life, we make a deal, to deal with tough emotions …

and life in any form, in order to grow and transform has to give up the comfort of the Cocoon, right from a butterfly, to the seed embedded in the womb of the earth, or that embedded and implanted in the womb of a mother, else it gets fossilised.

Emotions on both spectrum, the so-called positive or the so-called negative, are our data towards recognising our own personal values…and unless we recognise our personal values, we will always be running on empty, seeking for life, for meaning, for joy, for love, for the fulfilment, for trust…forever distrusting the process called Life.

Vaishali.