“His entire family had been planning a road trip from Delhi to Calcutta for almost five months. On a Sunday morning in November, they left their house in Shalimar Garden, all set to hit the road. His father had been driving for almost seven hours now. The siblings were busy nagging each other as the mother giggled, looking at them. And then suddenly,”
Be honest. In that half a second gap ,did the image of a car accident run through your mind? Well,you aren’t the only one. I came across this example in one of the Ted Talks by Brene Brown. And my pessimistic response started a chain of thoughts.
Maybe suddenly, the family had stopped the car to gaze at the elephants passing by. Why could I think of nothing else but something horrible like an accident to follow the ‘suddenly’?
This pattern is not limited to our responses to such questions. We carry it in our daily lives too. Given a situation we always try to prepare ourselves for the worst. Whenever I ask a friend to revisit her blog, she tells me how the pen won’t understand her anymore. Or when I tell him to stand behind the karaoke mike and rock the house, he tells me how he will end up shattering the glasses his audience would be holding. The future mostly leads to a dead end.
It’s good to prepare yourself for the worst. But to prepare yourself only for the worst and not for the best is something I don’t agree with. Instead of investing all your energy in thinking about what’s the most tragic end this action could lead to, why can’t you put in some amount of energy in thinking about the cheap thrills or rush it will give you to scream your lungs out? In front of a complete strange audience who actually might end up liking it.
And maybe tell yourself, “The worst that could happen is that they won’t like my piece. That is it,right?”. This way Satan will get acknowledged and end up encouraging you to walk towards that mike.
If it’s going to take you the same amount of energy to think about good and bad results then why not think of a brighter picture for once?
Why always put the bandage before you even get hurt? Won’t layering a perfectly healthy patch of skin with just bandages hurt you eventually?
