On One sided, negative thinking
I'm rather fond of reading books, reading them slow and steady-digesting all the details. Which is why, unlike Winnie and Joseph, I'm better at remembering even the complicated Russian names in Russian novels..But jokes apart..I'm also terribly fond of writing and I find that the reflections authors offer in their novels are quite intriguing. Some of the traits are scarily similar to my person.

Currently, I'm reading Tolstoy's timeless classic 'Anna Karenina'. Today I read this bit wherein, through the character of Levin, Tolstoy remarks on one sided, negative thinking. Giving the example of death: Levin looks at the dying man and feels scared and repulsed. But his wife looks and feels a deluge of emotions and an over powering urge to alter things. This affects Levin: why could he not think the same way. Why did he hopelessly give in to death? Couldn't he have thought of-perhaps making the last days of the dying man pleasent...

This ofcourse is a very intellectual example. But I find that this kind of an approach to things is quite common. We look at people, and those unattractive to our eyes are given up in an instance. Can't we perhaps think of giving them a chance. Maybe their situation in life is because of some incorrigible reason. Talking of something closer to my life: tech fear. You know, the moment I lay my eyes on any machine with lots of buttons I totally succumb to this wierd fear that stuff will go wrong. I can just feel my fear and not think otherwise. Why cannot I take it that I'm learning something which might prove useful to me? Why do I just give it up as a botched job? Why can't I get over making a total fool of myself? The same thing happened with swimming. When in the water, I could just feel the fear and not that here was something that would perhaps help me shed some baby fat that has accompanied me for eons it seems and prove 'quite fun', as Eva and later Fer put it.

So, upon chancing on this intellectual offering from Tolstoy, I decided to try taking a different, more optimistic approach to stuff. Not fretting over the technicalities in Radio 2 (when we haven't even started), giving a shot to Dreamweaver (what the hell was I thinking) and yeah...swimming the entire breadth of my condo's pool without once succumbing to the fear of drowning (I know I'm a total idiot sometimes). It felt great.

An anonymous author offered: "Can't died in the battle of Try". When it comes to a mind issue like this, I SO agree.