+/-

     I made a conscious decision years ago to be more positive. This seems to annoy a lot of people. I post about it on social media all the time, to very little fanfare. There is a core group of people who seem to like it and get something out of it, but most people just ignore it. Some people actually get mad about it, but I think if you get mad at someone else for saying that things aren’t as bad as they seem, and there is beauty and kindness in the world if you look, you might have some more pressing personal issues you need to sort out. Ultimately, it seems to help a bunch of people, as well as myself, so I'm not going to stop talking about it.
     I used to be one of those people who got mad at other people who seemed to be content or nice or happy. I remember reading about Sting some years back, and how he meditated and examined himself and how he really was at peace. He seemed sincere. It seemed genuine. And I hated him for it. I used to think he was a smug, happy bastard, who was just rubbing my face in it. It’s easy to be happy and at peace when you’re a rich rock star, you deluded asshole!
     Then, I started to notice that there were people from all walks of life who had somehow achieved this inner peace as well. I realized I was jealous of them for not having that inner turmoil and anxiety that I knew so well. I envied their cool confidence, and how they saw the good in everything and kept hope alive. All of those things were about as far away from where I was as you could get, but I had no clue or roadmap on how to get there.
     So, I used to be anything but positive. Like most negative people, I think had myself convinced that I was the most positive person in the world. I would explain how I was a realist as well. I would go on about how I wasn't going to ignore the truth, and somehow twisted my cynicism, fear, and bitterness at the world into some half baked, pseudo philosophy that didn't quite hold up under scrutiny.
     So I just didn't scrutinize it.
     I was proud of the fact that the way I would approach any problem or concern was to first and foremost imagine the worst possible outcome. I would then reassure myself that I could handle it if it came to that, and work my way back from there. To me, that was sensible and logical, the pinnacle of reason.
     The problem was, I was training myself to immediately visualize the most negative outcome possible, and that's not positive thinking, that's trying to control the uncontrollable. That's starting from a place of fear, and worrying more about your ego, and succumbing to irrational thinking than addressing the problem at hand.
     If you think that's reasonable and logical, let's look at it from an oddsmaker's perspective. How many times have you been faced with a problem or uncertain future, and the worst, most absolute possible outcome you could conjure up came true? It would be something like close to 0%, because we face stuff like this all our lives, and we're not all living in a shack by the river with the bubonic plague and wooden stumps for legs. Sure, a few times in your life, you're probably going to get some really bad news, but when you compare that with all the times you basically skate through stuff that terrified you at first, it's almost nil.
     So worrying about the absolute worst thing you can imagine every time you're faced with a conundrum is not very reasonable at all. It's like going to the track and betting the longshot every time. It's like hitting on 20 in blackjack, or mortgaging your house and buying lottery tickets with the money. It's like a whole lot of other sucker bets that make no sense, and go against the odds every time. Ask any gambler, you're not going to get anywhere by doing that.
     You're brain tricks you into believing all kinds of absolute bullshit, just to alleviate your fear. Make no mistake, we are all living in terror most of the time. We are so frightened of the unknown, paralyzed by uncertainty, that we will base all of our behavior on trying to reassure ourselves, no matter what we have to tell ourselves to achieve it. One of the easiest ways for our brains to do that is to lower our expectations. To denigrate the things we really want, to invalidate our dreams and desires, so we don't miss them when we inevitably don't get them. Aim low, and that way you're never disappointed. You don't deserve it anyway, so settle for what you get.
     Then we convince ourselves that we are being responsible and realistic. We are parading our negative attitude around like it's some sort of admirable trait.
     There's an old joke about a traveling salesman, whose car breaks down out in the country on a desolate road on a rainy night. He trudges down the road for miles, looking for a house to use a phone to call for a tow truck. He's cursing the rain, cursing the chill, cursing the dark. He thinks to himself how he will most likely find a house, and no one will be home, or he will get a door slammed in his face. Maybe it will be a farmhouse, and some dumb hick farmer will try to shoot him for trespassing, or because he thinks he'll try something on his daughter. Out here, they probably won't even have a phone.
     Finally, he comes to a house, with a light on inside, and walks up to the front door and knocks.
     The door opens, a man opens the door and says "Can I help you?" 
     The salesman yells "You can shove your phone right up your ass!" and storms off into the night.
     The reason I know that joke is because since I was a boy, we teased my father that he was like the salesman. My father has a lot of amazing and admirable qualities, but he is a Ferraris, and we come from a long line of negative thinkers. In our family, to this day, when one of us catches the other being negative and bitching about things that haven’t even happened yet, we just say "Shove your phone up your ass!" and the point is well taken.
     Like I said, I used to be negative as well. I expected the worst; out of people, out of the world, and ultimately, out of myself. I didn't even realize that I was doing it.
      I'm a Ferraris.
      My brother is a Ferraris as well, but he's not nearly as negative as the rest of us. None of us are sure why. In fact, we kind of saw it as a defect in a way. The prevailing opinion of my brother was that he was a dreamer, a butterfly who flitted about without a care in the world and no sense of responsibility or how to live in the real world. He stays up too late, and sleeps in some times, and is often running late.
     The thing is, my brother can be cynical or get down at times. As far as not having any sense of responsibility, he somehow managed to build a career, get married, raise two wonderful children, and become a pretty amazing potter along the way. My brother lives his life. He does more in a day than most people. He works, he takes care of his family, he helps out his friends, he gets to his studio, he goes to museums and lectures and lunches, and he finds time to talk on the phone with me and goof about dumb pop culture references and inside jokes when he's not listening to my problems.
     It turns out that the joke was on us. My brother might be as imperfect as the rest of us, but the things we saw as weird and irresponsible was just him not being as miserable and negative as we were. He did just fine, thank you.
     So one day, about 8 years ago, my brother and I were playing golf. Around the 5th hole, I suddenly realized that my necklace was missing. I had that necklace since the early 90's. It was a trilobite fossil a friend had given me, and my parents had a jeweler they knew make a special setting for it, with a silver chain. I have worn that necklace every day of my life since I'd gotten it, some 20 years earlier.
     Now it was gone.
     I immediately thought to myself that the odds of ever seeing it again were zero. It was lost on a golf course, and probably had already gone through a mower. In an instant, I gave up any hope of seeing that necklace again. I convinced myself to just let it go, because there was no sense even thinking I would ever find it. I told my brother we should just forget about it and keep playing.
     He looked at me like I was nuts. He wanted to drive back over the course and look for it. He wanted to see if anyone had found it and turned it in. I told him he was crazy, it was gone, just let it go. He searched the golf cart a few times, and kept trying to think of places it could be. In my pocket, down my shirt, in my shoe, all which seemed ridiculous. I told him again to just let it go and forget about it.
     He refused. He told me how he always envisions the positive, and believes that there is always a chance for a happy outcome. There goes my wacky brother again I thought to myself. Always a dreamer.
     Still, we traced our path back across the golf course, and just like I thought, we came up empty handed. We finished our round, and once back at the clubhouse, he asked if there was a lost and found, and if anyone turned in my necklace.
     No one had.
     The guy at the counter told us that odds were it was gone, just like I'd been saying. Still, my brother said he refused to accept that there was no hope, and that it would turn up somewhere. It was starting to get annoying. He went to his car to put his clubs in the trunk, as I walked to mine to do the same. I was angry about my necklace, and perturbed at my brother for being so daft as to think that I would ever see my necklace again.
     As I reached down to open the trunk, there was my necklace on the ground. It had fallen off when was getting my clubs from my car trunk earlier. It had been here waiting for me the whole time. I picked it up, and put it around my neck, only then willing to even admit to myself how wrong everything seemed without it. I couldn't even let myself feel distraught about it missing, let alone entertain the thought that I might get it back.
     I went over to my brother and showed him that I found it and told him where it was, and he didn't seem all that taken aback.
     "See," he told me, "I told you it would probably turn up. Think positive."
      At that moment, I had one of those epiphanies we all have all the time, then immediately forget about. Only this time, I didn't forget. I thought about how I easily I had given up on something I loved and cherished as much as that necklace. I thought about how many times I had just given up without trying because it was safer and easier than having hope. I remembered how a friend of mine once said to me that the reason I was so tormented was because I still had hope, and to be truly happy, I should get rid of that, and I had thought he was the wisest person I'd ever met.
     From that moment, I decided to be more positive and as fearless as I could be.
     But yeah, turns out it wasn't that simple.
     When you have epiphanies, the universe sees it, and takes it as a challenge. At least, that’s the way I saw it. I had a lifetime of fear and anxiety drilled into me. It had been beaten into me by bullies, absorbed by frightened and confused people all around me, it loomed over everything during the Cold War, where we were reminded that we could be vaporized in a nuclear holocaust any moment.
     It was all around me even now, in the news and in advertising, in political speeches and urban legends and horror movies and true crime shows. Most songs were about heartbreak, most people seemed suspect, and everyone seemed even more terrified than I was.
     Everyone was afraid of being alone, yet afraid of being in a relationship, afraid to care, afraid to trust, afraid to live. I was no different.
     Still, I thought I saw a better way. On paper, it still seemed like it made more sense to be positive and forward thinking than to be stifled and caged by insecurity and fear. I needed to somehow transfer that from an idea to a way of life.
     I needed to reinvent myself.
     Some people accuse people like me of putting on an act. They think I'm fooling myself, or trying to trick them, or manipulate others. They think I'm trying to put lipstick on a pig, or polish a turd, or some other disturbing metaphor that people in times past could relate to, for some reason. They think I'm fooling myself, and trying to convince myself of something that I don't really believe.
     Here's the funny thing about that. At one point in my life, that was probably more true than not. After that day on the golf course, I was still pretty skeptical about the whole thing. Negative thinking and low expectations was my safe place. It was like I was afraid to expect anything good, like even allowing myself to hope for it was jinxing myself. It was scary to simply accept that there was a chance things could work out, even though most of life things pretty much worked out okay.
     I still get that. I still knock on wood and try to rein in my enthusiasm at times, like if I say what I want out loud, or even think about it too much, I'll ruin it, like the way you can't tell anyone your birthday wish, or it won't come true. I didn’t want the universe to see it as a challenge.
     So for months afterwards, I would have to force myself to stay positive, and I was so anxiety ridden that I was somehow asking for trouble by thinking I might deserve the best possible outcome that it seemed completely wrong and counterintuitive. I felt like a phony, like I was trying to convince myself of something that I didn't really believe.
     Because I was. It took work. It took facing my fears and insecurities. It took strength holding onto that positivity until things did turn out okay. Even more, it took faith and hope that when they didn't, it wasn't the universe punishing me for wanting it. I came to realize that whether or not I worried and fretted about things that were out of my control, things were going to happen the way they happen, so why should I spend that time worrying?
     You might say that I'm just giving in, or not trying, but here's the real secret about positive thinking your frightened brain doesn't want you to see. You waste your energy on controlling an outcome that doesn’t even exist yet, rather than work in the moment on the things you can actually affect. When you're not wasting your time and energy on things that are beyond your control, you can put that time and effort into the things you can influence and determine. Letting go of your illusionary stranglehold on things is a huge help in itself.
     Have you ever been driving down the road and noticed a pothole up ahead? Sometimes, you focus on it, and start telling yourself the one thing you don't want to do is hit that pothole. You find yourself transfixed to the point where you can't see anything but the pothole, and before you know it, you're driving right over it and knocking your front end out of alignment.
     That's the real damage negativity does to us all. It gives you tunnel vision, it sucks your will and strength, it holds you back and holds you down. No matter where you are, all you can see is a destination you want to avoid. That’s like planning a trip to the Grand Canyon with a map of the Sudan.
     Eventually, it makes you see the world around you as a place to fear and hate. It makes you see people as weak and corrupted, because that's how we start to see ourselves. When you focus on the bad, that's all you see. We downplay the things that should bring us pride and confidence, and as we push ourselves to failure, we diminish the love we have for who we are.
     We lose track of the fact that we are amazing and capable of greatness. We lose sight of our dreams, because the more we fear failure, the more we are ensuring it.
     I realized all this, but I still couldn't quite have the courage to live it. I knew it, but I still didn't feel it.
     So I faked it. I put on a brave front, even though I was terrified inside. I acted like the person I wanted to be, not the person I felt I was. But you know what? One day, I realized that I had become that person. I willed myself into becoming the thing that I wanted to be; the thing I was pretending to be ceased to be pretend.
     I was a real boy!
     No, wait, that's Pinocchio.
     But really, I was so much freer than I had ever been. I wasn't trying to fool myself or fate or destiny. I wasn't trying to manipulate the universe into letting me be safe and average. I wasn't denying who I was and what I wanted out of life.
     I started sharing my writing and my outlook online. I started singing with a band, and writing songs. I took chances in life and business and love. I talked to people I met, and learned how to listen and care and express myself. I learned how to put myself out there and not be afraid of hearing "no" or getting hurt.
     And I got hurt at times. I came up short at times. I got discouraged now and then, and there was still heartbreak and misery along the path.
     I took those failures and heartbreak, and I gleaned wisdom from them. I cried when I needed to, but it made me stronger and strengthened my resolve.
     I'm still not where I want to be. I'm still prone to tripping myself up at times. I can still be a little self destructive, like all of us. I still fuck up, and say the wrong thing, or make the wrong decision, or bite off more than I can chew. I still disappoint others as well as myself.
     The difference is, I don't sit around beating myself up for it. I don't let it stop my forward momentum. I apologize when I'm wrong, I course correct when I need to, I laugh at my faux pas, and I make sure I learn whatever lesson is there to be learned from my mistakes. I still get bogged down, but I use that time to plot a new course. I don't let people take my missteps or failures or shortcomings and use them against me. I don't use them against myself.
     I find the strength to keep going in myself, and in the belief that the world is full of opportunity and kindness and second chances. I find inspiration everywhere I look, and in the people I know and read about. I share all the little and big things about myself with the world, because I think it makes the world a better place. I think it brings comfort to people. I think it makes me stronger and more accessible. I look for light, and I find it all around me, and I let that light vanquish the darkness.
     I know who I am, I'm David Ferraris, and I'm kind of wise, and somewhat talented in a couple of areas. I'm loyal and funny and smart and comforting. I'm sort of easy on the eyes, and I really like that I can feel that way and accept those things about me, because for so long, I couldn't . I thought I was wrong or ashamed for liking and embracing myself. I want to inspire others and find the good in people. I want to leave things better than I found them. I want to succeed and grow and learn, even if that means failing at times or looking silly. I'm proud of who I am, and I'm happy that I'm the sort of person who wants to lift everyone up around him and try to save the world in my own little way, one person at a time. Life’s a journey, you might as well make it a pleasant one.
     I expect nothing less, and neither should you.