We've got troubles, but the sky's not falling

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday April 6th, 2009

I almost always approach this column by trying to think what is going wrong right now, or what I see as a potential problem, and then writing an opinion.

There is no end to what I could write about. To be honest, there is no end to what we think about. There was a children's story when I was growing up about a chicken named Henny Penny who kept telling everyone the sky was falling; which in her experience, it was.

I will leave it to you to go look it up, but the moral of the story is that she and her friends become so concerned with the sky falling that they stopped looking at the world around them and ended up in trouble.

So, the sky is falling, economic woes, the demise of capitalism, continued terrorist threats, prolific nuclear weapons black market trade, human trafficking, global warming, increased crime, you name it.

Did you ever stop to wonder why the powers that be want us to know about these things? I mean, really, anything can be hidden from us pretty simply; the things we find out about are put out there for a reason.

I would like to put forth the argument that the reason is to shield us from the truth that the world is a pretty good place.

Here are some news items that did not make it into regular print this last week.

San Francisco, after rolling out a test fleet of hybrid taxis, has proven they could survive past the 300,000 mile mark. March was the best month on Wall Street since 2002. A Dutch bank named Triodos has been successfully experimenting with micro financing of developing countries. There was some encouraging news about a vaccine for breast cancer. Six thousand rare dolphins, a species thought to be dying out, were found in a river in Bangladesh. Last Tuesday a Russian-European astronaut team began training for a manned mission to Mars. In Massachusetts a toddler fell out of a 40 foot high window in her house; two strangers who were passing by bolted across traffic when they saw the baby dangling and caught her, unharmed. They found a cure for Sickle-Cell Anaemia using stem cells. A bionic eye gave a blind man sight. For the first time ever they managed to sedate a whale and untangle it from fishing rope. They created a biomass charcoal heater which is way more efficient and green conscious.

I could go on like this forever.

And this is my point. News is only newsworthy if it is out of the ordinary, if it is different from the day to day. I have said this before and I will say it again; the day that newspapers report only paragraphs like mine above is the day that I will really be worried.

Why do we focus on the negative? Why are we so sure the sky is falling?

I am not sure I have an answer to that.

But I do believe that whole "you are what you think" credo has a lot to be said for it. Positive thinking is a mental attitude that admits into the mind thoughts, words and images that are conductive to growth, expansion and success.

If you think the world is a good place, if you think you are going to succeed, then you are simply in a better place to begin working towards something better.

I know that not everyone accepts or believes in positive thinking. I also know that there will be times when I think the best and the absolute worst is going to happen. But rarely, and I mean statistically almost impossibly, are we ever in a place where the sky is truly falling.

So let me suggest that the world would be a better place if we tried very hard to remember that good things happen far more frequently than bad. We need to practice the forgotten art of positive thinking. This is not as easy as it sounds. Attitude and thoughts do not change overnight.

There is also, I will have you know in conspiratorial confidence, a lot riding on our sense that everything is going to hell in a hand basket. It helps keep governments and military industrial complexes in power, for example, but I digress.

Why not try it out? Try to at least balance the bad you hear with the good you encounter. Try to stay focused on things working out. Always visualize only favourable and beneficial situations. Use positive words in your inner dialogues or when talking with others. Smile a little more, as this helps to think positively. Disregard any feelings of laziness or a desire to quit. If you persevere, you will transform the way your mind thinks.

Once a negative thought enters your mind, you have to be aware of it and endeavour to replace it with a constructive one. The negative thought will try again to enter your mind, and then you have to replace it again with a positive one.

It does not matter what your circumstances are at the present moment. Think positively, expect only favourable results and situations, and circumstances will change accordingly. It may take some time for the changes to take place, but eventually they do.

Heed the cautionary tale of Henny Penny. If we concentrate too much on the falling sky, we miss the goodness that is all around us. To quote the immortal Louis Armstrong, "what a wonderful world . . ."