Negativity Makes Us Less Than Human

It is sad to watch how the world behaves these days.  It seems that everyone is caught up in the fear, the loathing, the hatred, judgement and criticism of one another.  I can't speak for all countries and nations of the world because I do not live or travel there, but in the US, it is a very toxic place.

All you have to do is take a moment and observe what is going on around you.  If you watch the news or follow it along on the internet, you'll see just how toxic it has become.  We are not doing anyone much good these days and if we don't reverse this, I fear we will completely lose our sense of humanity.

Take for example, the Olympics and Michael Phelps.  The other day when he did not win the gold, I immediately saw a twitter trend of many negative comments towards him.  It was almost like people reveled and took joy in his demise of not winning the race.  One person even tweeted me as if to enlighten me that while Phelps had done great things, he is very douche like.  While I'm not sure exactly what she was referring to, my response was that I try to find the good in all people.  After all, this is a competition and yet, we feel the need to hate and criticize with negativity something that someone does who we barely know or interact with?  It still boggles my mind just how hateful these things were.

I Can Draw

MD Anderson Cancer Center of Orlando held a class on learning to draw a face.  The class was taught by Angilyn Watson and was part of their mind body medicine program.  They have many classes throughout the year at MD Anderson and many are free.  The classes are for patients, family, friends and the public.

When I saw this class become available, I thought it might be fun.  Of course, the skeptical side in me said, "silly - you know you can't draw!"  Yes, I know that drawing stick figures was a challenge for me, but I'm creative and I thought, heck, why not give it a try.  After all, what's the worst that could happen.  Maybe I would just spend two hours in a class proving I can't draw or that my stick figures might look more realistic.  The person teaching the class did guarantee we would learn to draw a face.  I wondered before I went if she knew what she was getting herself into with someone like me.

Putting all skepticism and negativity aside, I'm glad I went that day.  My drawing doesn't look perfect to me but in a two hour class that was fast paced, I'm very surprised at what I accomplished.  I learned things about drawing that I never knew.  High school art class never really taught me much other than the fact that I didn't understand how to draw a still life picture represented by a bowl of fruit. 

A Little Good News or Some Toxic Negativity

If you follow the news much these days you will see what a depressing entity it really is. Okay, depressive news is nothing new of course because I can remember many years ago when a song came out by Huey Lewis and The News, titled A Little Good News. Many in those days were sitting here and saying the same thing.

Maybe things have not changed that much overall and all we are looking through is just one tiny little blip in time. Maybe it is all a matter of perspective. In fact, it could be that we as humans tend to navigate toward negative news and actually attract it into our lives. In all honesty before we go blaming the news media, if we as humans didn't soak up the negative news, than the news media outlets would be publishing something different.

If you need evidence of that, just take a look at Oprah's new TV station, the OWN network. It is actually a great place with some uplifting and thought provoking programming. You don't come away from watching her network feeling like you have to take a bath to rid yourself of the toxic negativity. Of course there are some that would not listen to Oprah no matter what, but the shows I have watched on there are very good.