That’s It, Find Something Negative

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Last night I was talking to one of my friends on the phone. I told him I was thinking about signing up on a site where freelancers can get jobs. I let my friend listen to a TED talk about the site. As soon as the talk was over the first thing my friend said was, “Don’t you see a problem? That person is naive. This isn’t going to create jobs. It’s going to drive million of people out of work.” My first thought was, “That’s it, find something negative about it.” I’ve known this friend since the fourth grade. He wasn’t always full of negativeness. I really don’t know when it started but I think it started somewhat slowly a few years out of high school. One day he talked about one or two negative things. Then it just kept building. Now it’s to the point where I can’t say anything without him saying something negative about it. If I won a million dollars my friend would probably say, “You know almost half of that money is going to taxes, so you didn’t win a million dollars.” Yes, I know a good sum is going to taxes, but instead of the negative, what can’t he say, “Congratulations! I’m happy for you.” I learned there is no reasoning with him. He’ll just counter with more negativeness. So I just let him talk with it going in one ear and out the other. No jobs, robots, worthless money, sunspots, no electricity, everything going awry. Those are some of the things I heard him say. I gathered robots are going to take over the world then there will be no jobs and money will be worthless. What sunspots, no electricity and everything going awry has to do with it, I don’t know. I soon made an excuse that I had to go and hung up. It was time for some positive thinking.