POSITIVE THINKING
Do you remember the book, The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale? I sure do. It took the country by storm. Think positively and positive things will fall into your lap unimpeded by necessity. It was published in 1952, just in time as I was becoming a conscious human being able to comprehend simple ideas and standard ideology. Everyone was thinking positively. The whole country became obsessed with positive thinking. Positive thoughts ruled the day.
And I thought, well maybe it is worth trying. So I tried it out. I thought positively about a whole bunch of stuff and you know what? It really depended on what you considered "positive". I could think positive about a particular meal that my mother would make for supper and low and behold, it wasn't particularly edible and I thought to myself: "Thinking positive about supper really didn't work out so well".
What I apparently was not doing was "taking control of my thoughts" and "changing my attitude" both part of the program of positiveness as set out by Dr. Peal. My thoughts seemed to come by themselves and my attitude continued to be somewhat askew of normal. Apparently, the secret is taking control of them, but how? Thoughts seem to pop up from nowhere - - bang: I just had a thought and it was not positive - - it had to do with the jerk down the street; and then another - - it had to do with how much I hated my teacher when I was in fifth grade. Now I could tell myself that the neighbor down the street was actually a really nice guy or the music teacher was just doing her job but those would be complete misrepresentations of the facts which seems to me to be worse than being negative. So this leaves me, again, with the perplexity of how to obtain positive thoughts.
Over the years I have come into contact with numerous people who in one way or the other have indulged in positive thinking - - at least that is their presentation. And I acknowledge their positiveness positively. It apparently has taken some effort on their part to maintain positiveness considering the various and sundry failures normally associated with existence - - they indicate that it is a continuing process; one which involves considerable effort at remaining positive. I certainly applaud the effort; after all who likes to be around negative people. No one. But, I, on the other hand, don't seem to have the knack.
Richard E H Pheps II
Mingo
