Burning Down the House

Sometimes you can't help but be caught in a trap not of your own making. Forces around you conspire to put you in a place you simply don't want to be in. More often than not those places aren't actually places, they are circumstances or states of mind. Arriving in Negative Town with Negative Nelly and Debbie Downer is what I'm talking about.

To be clear, this isn't about someone having a bad day or week for whatever reason...I get those. Hell, I sometimes literally get those. Or any sort of mental health issue that our brothers and sisters deal with on a daily basis with lack of support from the world. No...what I'm talking about is those miserable fucks that seem to take joy from being negative...always. You know the ones...they sap the energy out of a room when they walk in, you dread going to work knowing they are going to be there, you do a little dance when you see that they aren't working with you for a couple of days. Those people.

I worked with a guy a lifetime ago. Super nice guy and always upbeat. Despite my frustration with his "way" of doing things I really liked him. He ended up going into business with a couple of guys on a banquet hall in Burlington if I remember correctly. A shaky venture in a more than shaky building. My buddy was telling us how good of a deal they got on rent and all I thought I can't believe they have the nerve to charge you rent....but I digress.

As was often the case back then my buddy Peter and I would lend a helping hand to our mutual benefactor. It's what we did as he would do that for us as well if we ever needed a hand. So we found ourselves working one Saturday afternoon in the hall from hell doing some prep with one of his partners, an older Italian guy named John. Now, John was a good cook, old school but still a good cook. He had a great mushroom soup which was surpassed only by mine, and he did traditional Italian food well. And he was negative as fuck.

I mean it looked like he was sucking on lemons half the day. The rest of the day he was trying to erase his sour look with acts of contrition and kindness which you knew weren't genuine. Which of course simply added to the negative experience. I've met many people that seem to like being in a cloud of darkness but John even talked negative in regular everyday speech. Such as this: John, do you want me to put the knife on the counter for you? "No, no....put the knife on the counter." WTF? Do you want the knife on the counter or not? "No...on the counter please."

There's a line from the Godfather novel that Don Corleone utters when talking about Luca Brasi that I think of often when I come across these people that choose dark over light:

"There are men in this world who go about demanding to be killed. They argue in gambling games; they jump out of their cars in a rage if someone so much as scratches their fender. These people wander through the streets calling out "Kill me, kill me." Luca Brasi was such a man. And since he wasn't scared of death, and in fact, looked for it... 

Sometime I feel that people like this are simply happiest when they and all around are unhappy, shared misery being a bond of some sort. Or maybe "some people just want to watch the world burn." I don't know but I work at keeping those people out of my face, less they find out what a 2x4 upside the head feels like. I simply don't have the patience for it anymore...there is a good chance I will cut you out of my life if you are going to piss on my Corn Flakes. At the very least I will marginalise you and your effect.

I've been to Negative Town a few times in my life, didn't stay long though. I just don't want to be there and you can't make me. We all have our down times, that's normal, but fundamentally I think how we choose to react sets the tone for us as people. I choose to be happy...to look for the positive wherever I can find it. Sometimes it's not easy but perspective helps a lot.

"Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable

And lightness has a call that's hard to hear"

Closer to fine indeed.

Ciao 

D