Late Night Fiction One man’s non-fiction

Positive and Negative

This is life in a nutshell: you and the world. Inside you, there are two classifications of thought: positive and negative. Inside the world, you have an infinite amount of you's, each with an infinite amount of thoughts that fit these two classifications except you don't have control of these you's (we'll call them external you's).

You are like a points system. Positive thoughts give you a point and negative thoughts take away two points-- one for the negativity and one because the effortless nature of negative thoughts dictates that you have room for one more negative thought. Naturally, this is a recursively repeating downward spiral.

Negative thoughts don't get the credit they deserve in our world; in fact, they almost always sneak completely below the radar. On an individual basis, negative thoughts are the creators of depressing music; they're the birth of sad movies, paintings, and stories. They're the synthesis of your own negative thoughts and/or negative thoughts from external you's (and only these two things). On a broader scale, they're what most religions would define as "evil." And they come so easily because they are humanity's "default" setting. They are the things that happen to you that make you change yourself (for the worse), rather than enforce your current behavior. In psychology, they're appropriately named negative punishment. In philosophy, they're named subconscious motivations. These are the things that "just happen" early on and by the time you reach adolescence they have become a part of you.

Positive thoughts are the ones that build you up. They are the birth of smiles. They are the birth of laughter. They are a product of freedom from yourself and the world around you. Most of the time, however, they are so fleeting that they only last in these short moments of joy and laughter. And it is the nature of these transient thoughts that makes them the most rare of thoughts that can be thunk-- it makes positivity so rare that it can hardly be said to exist in our world at all.

So, ultimately, you have two ways to view life (since it is all relative to you): positive or negative. If positive thoughts are more appealing, know that they need to be fought for. If you're in the opposite side of the spectrum, step outside of you and view yourself as if you are really an external you. You simply need to realize where you are in relation to where you want to be.

At the end of the day, all that needs to be remembered is this: life is simple. People are complicated. Complication always overpowers simplicity, which is why our world/life "is" so complex. It doesn't have to be for you.