Negativity Alarm

In case you haven’t noticed yet, the world in which we live is rather negative. In fact, it’s very negative. Many things are expressed in a negative way, rather than a positive one. Take traffic lights for instance, I’m sure you’ve noticed that they’re called “stop lights;” well, why not call them “go lights?” After all, that’s what we’re all waiting for, them to signal us that we can go, not that we can stop.

If you take a moment to look around, you’ll notice all kinds of things like this. It’s no wonder that there are so many negative, depressed people in the world; it’s almost like society is working overtime to make us that way.

On the flip side of the coin, we look suspiciously at people who are always smiling, happy and positive. There’s something about them, which makes us all wonder if they’re on something. Either that or we just figure that they’re out of touch with reality. After all, we all know that life is full of problems, so they can’t be all that happy, not without something to help them along.

In a recent in-depth study done by me, I looked at the lives of three people, my pet dog, the neighbor’s cat and four birds in our back yard. In this earth-shaking study, I discovered that negativity breeds negativity. That’s right, if you are around people who are negative all the time, you too will learn how to be negative. Every wondered why you’re so negative? It’s from listening to your mother tell you “No!” all those years you were growing up.

Yep, if your mother had just been more positive, you’d be so too. Of course, everyone else might think that you belong in a funny farm, but that’s their problem. It’s not your fault that they were born to negative mothers.

The obvious solution to this problem is to avoid negative people. Hindu gurus do this by climbing the highest mountain they can find, and hiding out in a cave up there. They spend their days meditating on nothing, because there’s nothing much that one can do hiding out in a cave. C’mon now, what would you do if you spent all your days in a cave in the mountains?

Well, for those of us that want a little more excitement in our lives than what cave life offers, we need a way to avoid negativity, while still living in the midst of society. That would mean that we need a negativity alarm. Since negative people put off a negative vibe, somebody should be able to develop an electronic device which alerts us at their pending arrival. That would give us the chance to duck out quickly, before they appear.

The same device could probably home in on positive people, providing us with a way of getting closer to those crazies who always see life through rose colored glasses. You know who I mean, the people who always have a smile on their faces, a joke on their lips and a laugh on their belly.

Of course, with so much negativity in the world, the alarm would probably be going off constantly. I think that could be overcome though. There would probably be a learning curve for new users, in which their device would help them identify the negative influences in their lives. Once those were identified, they could restructure their lives to avoid all those negative influences. Of course, that might require the aforementioned cave in the mountains.

I can see where businesses and schools would quickly be making rules to outlaw the use of such devices. Since students generally think that their teachers are negative, taking away their freedom to hang out with their friends, alarms would be going off constantly. Likewise in workplaces, since most people aren’t thrilled with their bosses. Managing would be extremely tricky when every employee would have an alarm to tell them when their boss was getting close. “Quick everyone, pretend to work, the boss is coming.”

Even with these restrictions, I still think this device would be worth inventing. People could avoid at least some of the negativity in their lives, like court dates, dentist appointments and bill collectors. Just think how much happier most people would be without those.