Driving in and out of my neighborhood, it never fails that my eyes get drawn to the nastiest of yards. There are beautiful yards as well, probably the majority of them, but for some reason my eyes don't notice them anymore unless I specifically make myself look for them. My husband says the same thing, although when we have company over, the first thing they tell us is how beautiful our neighborhood is! It always amazes us. Did they not notice all those unruly, overgrown yards and houses in disrepair? Our neighborhood is older and the yards are much larger than in new subdivisions. The homes sit amidst a very natural setting with lots of trees, so I can see where someone who doesn't frequent the drive through on a regular basis, might only notice the general setting and not the details.This got me to thinking.....in so many cases, the negatives end up outweighing the positives when the negatives repeatedly get thrown at us. There tends to be a multiplication factor that develops which depends on the frequency of hits. ie.....rainy days: You could have just experienced a month of beautiful sunny weather, but one week of rain hits you, and you complain that it's been raining forever.
This theory could probably apply to most negative or unfavorable things in our lives. So why does the negative seem to receive more attention? Are we programmed to only want the positive? But, if we only had the positive, would we enjoy it as much?
7 comments:
well I think the more we are in an environment the more fault we find with it, just cause we feel rather 'in a rut' about it. Like yesterday my best friend came over, and mentioned my "house is always so clean" and I'm like "girl, what are YOU TALKING ABOUT" and pointed out spots on the couch and crap all over, dust bunnies rolling through the room... ha ha.
Also, my husband will compliment me and instead of being like "thank you" I'll be like, "but blah blah blah" and point out the negative. I mean I'm not a negative person, but maybe familiarity breeds the picking at details that could be construed as negative.
In general, the news is WAY negative. There's a little paper called the Coffee News here with nothing but funny stories and stuff. Interesting post!
m2 - I was going to add the news to this post, but decided against it since it's so obviously negative. This post was geared to more subliminal negativism in our lives. Thanks for your great input!
Come to NM yorks. You'll never complain about your neighborhood again :-D
I love it here because it's so unkempt and unruly.
Now you've totally ruined my image of NM! Of all states, NM is the first and foremost I've always wanted to visit, but I've never gotten there. I love natural, but I don't like unkempt.
Okay, now I'll just go to Oregon instead.
NM and far western TX are very beautiful in rugged majestic ways.
beans, natural IS unkempt.
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