This Is My Life

Call it The Law of Attraction, The Power of Positive Thinking, or even The Secret; the theory is the same: If you think good things are coming to you, they will. You just concentrate on the good stuff, ignore the bad stuff, and the world will be your play thing, leaving you healthy, wealthy, and in charge. That's all there is to it according to most people I've talked with.

Just ask Jane. Jane's a woman I met recently who stumbled onto this in a big way. Her first big challenge is losing weight, and it's one that she's been fighting all her life. Jane believes that through this powerful "think it, be it" approach to things, she can sit around all day and think herself thin. Wouldn't that be great? I talked to her during this time and she looked bigger than ever, but was convinced that she was losing weight. She'd been using positive thinking for three months, and was sure it was working.

Proof? Well, she didn't want to step on a scale because that would mean that she didn't just trust that the Universe was getting her everything she wanted. She didn't want to taint the pureness of her good thoughts, don'tcha know. She could eat anything at all, have as many helpings of loaded mashed potatoes as she wanted, and still lose weight. She was living proof that this thing worked!

Except, of course, when she finally did step on a scale at her doctor's office, she had put on more than twenty pounds in those three months. The doctor took her off the Krispy Kreme diet, put her on a medically regulated one, and she's doing better, but she's not nearly as happy about it.

Let me rephrase that. She ecstatic that she's losing weight. She's not so happy that she has to actually do work to make it happen.

Then there's my friend Chuck. Great guy, seriously. He went to college, got a degree, became a music teacher, traveled the world, and led a great life. He stumbled into The Secret, and it changed his life dramatically. Suddenly he didn't have to work at having a good life anymore, he just had to think himself into better situations. Everything was his for the taking, and he just had to clap his hands and say that he does believe in fairies. This was awesome, and just what he was looking for!

When I met Chuck, he worked the night shift doing a minimum-wage data entry job. His wife, also once a teacher, worked at a Wholesale store as a lady handing out samples. They were over their head in debt, couldn't travel anymore, and still convinced that the big payoff was coming. It was coming, don't you worry, life couldn't get them down because they knew that all it took was thinking positive.

That was two years ago. Last I heard, the payoff hasn't yet come. He's still in a job he hates, his wife is still getting flak from management about eating the free samples, and both of them are unhappy.

That all being said, you probably won't believe me when I say that I'm not bashing The Power of Positive Thinking.

No, seriously. I have nothing bad to say about people thinking positively and wanting the world to bend to their whim. I think the concept is awesome. The problem is that, as with so many different things, people only listen to the simple part, and stop there. They think they can think the world into submission, and never get to the step that says in order for it to work, you have to actually work towards your goal.

Let me say that again, because it's important:

In order for The Secret to work, you have to actually work towards your goal. You have to be willing to take chances, follow weird urges, and generally change your lifestyle to focus on the thing that you're trying to achieve while keeping a positive attitude about it. Without actually doing something to change your life towards what you're trying to achieve all you have is a happy attitude, which is nice, but doesn't get you rich. Or skinny. Or a girlfriend.

Okay, it might get you a girlfriend. Which is good. But when she realizes that you're jobless but not submitting applications anywhere because you're sure a job will just fall into your lap, your happy attitude might not mean much.

In other words folks, it's not just what you think. It's also what you do.

All my extra energy for the past few months has been spent in the pursuit of learning the Arabic language. When I'm walking down the halls at the college I get funny looks from people wondering why I'm concentrating so hard that I look constipated while muttering strange syllables under my breath. Worse than that is when I'm actually sitting in my chair and actively studying. It's like the world disappears around me, and there's nothing but the Arabic language in front of me. It got so bad, one night, that my wife asked me to please stop clearing my throat so loudly. The worst part is that I was in another room, with the door closed, and music playing so that I wouldn't disturb her.

Why is it, then, that I'm constantly feeling unprepared for class?

When there's a test, my brain panics, I start to freeze. An oral presentation to be given in class? I stand up in front of the other students, and feel as though I haven't learned the simplest forms of English, let alone Arabic.

Why is it? Well, for that I'm looking right at you, teach.

See, I know you haven't been teaching at this school very long, and that you love to spout off about how at Yale and Harvard the students were never late for class, never absent, but apparently there are a few things you missed realizing along the way. Let me help you here. Maybe if you listen to my advice you'll last longer at the University of Delaware than you did at those prestigious schools you like to name-drop. Here goes:

1) SHUT UP ABOUT HARVARD AND YALE!
~Obviously something happened and you're not working there any more, so every time you mention how much better the students were there, all I can wonder is why you're not still there, why you decided to move to a smaller, less famous/interesting/studious school. Every time you bring them up, all I see is failure in your eyes.

2) When you tell your students that a test is going to be specifically on a, b, and c, it's kind of rude to add subjects d and e.
~Especially when we haven't covered e. It's gotten to the point where students just don't believe you when you say that certain things are going to be on the test. Most just shrug and don't bother studying, because most of the time you don't even have a or b on the test. When asked, you say you "decided to go with something different at the last minute." Really? Did they teach you that at Harvard?

3) Making a student cry in class is not "shaking them up to be a better student," it's inappropriate.
~Giving them a hug afterward doesn't make it all better.

That's all I've got right now for you. Maybe I'll think of a few things later. The worst part is that when you're not actively teaching, you seem like a genuinely nice and caring person. I don't know why it is that the second you step into your authority mode you become inept, cruel, and down-right scary to your class.

Oh. One more:

4) In a class that's about talking in a foreign language, remember that if you intimidate us into silence we'll find it very difficult to speak, even in our native tongue.
~I'm 28 years old, comfortable and secure with myself. I'm a decade older than most kids in the class. All this together, and you still intimidate the hell out of me. I never want to speak up, even when I know I have the right answer, because of your attitude. I can't imagine what these kids go through.

Please, take this to heart. You've only been at our school for two semesters, and from the looks of things, I'm not sure you're going to last there much longer. It's obvious to us that you hate where you are; make some kind of change before it's made for you by the school.

Thanks. I hope this helps. Like I said, I think you're a nice person, you're just a horrid teacher. Good luck, and be well.

M'asselema.

My job is good for a few things, and one of those things happens to be finding quality entertainment in the form of making fun of what people say when they are asked to tell a company what it did wrong in its tech support. The things I hear are amazing.

Aside from general stupidity, however, I do get exposed to a whole new culture of words. There are things that southern people say that I have never heard before, at least not in this context. This is not an attempt to make fun of anyone* and really I'm just curious if someone can explain what these terms mean to those in the south of America or at the very least tell me I'm not crazy for finding it odd.

1) "Little" - People on these calls seem to want to preface just about everything and anything with the term "little." "Well that little guy down there** helped me out pretty good." "The little technician couldn't fix things."

My possible explanation: "The Little Train That Could." ?

2) "Proud" - Man these people are proud of everything! The technician did a good job on their lines? "I'm very proud of him." The problem was solved? "I'm proud of BellSouth for fixing it." I thought to have pride you actually had to have something to do with it? Like: "I'm proud of the fact that I was able to fix my car on my own." Or at the very least the person has to have something to DO with you. "I'm proud of my daughter for graduating summa whatever." But to be proud of a technician because they were able to fix the problem? I don't know, sounds kind of fishy to me.

I guess to me it's like saying "I was proud of my waiter for serving me all the right food and in a timely manner." Just weird.

3) This isn't a way of speech, but I always want to know - Why would you call your ISP because your cable is out, and then be angry that the people providing you with DSL internet can't get your cable back on?

Then I get things like this:

In Other Words
"Uh, yes. She should have asked a few more questions. Um. In other word she should have asked a few more questions."


I love my job. All work and no play makes Miah a dull boy.


*Okay, maybe one or two people.
**Down there? Down there? Come on folks, we all know that India isn't to the south of you!

For the record, I don't friends lock posts. I just don't write stuff that'll get people angry, or if I do I do it accepting the consequences. Other than that, if I do write something that maybe I shouldn't, I usually delete the post.

I will say what I said before though: Sometimes I just don't get women.

People with too many children piss me off. Yeah, that's right, you heard me. There are a few rules in life that I think need to be enacted, and many of them have to do with your right to bear children. I firmly believe it's only your right until society takes it away, and sometimes I seriously think they should.

At what point would I consider how many children you have "too many?" For some people it's one. Yes, one child is too many for some people. Most of the time that's because there's no money, no food, no shelter, nothing. Right, I'm saying that if you can't take care of your baby without federal help (and I don't mean medical bills due to complications, those can get horrible) and you know this before you get pregnant, then one child is too many for you!

I knew someone in high school that purposely got pregnant, dropped out of school, and lived off of public assistance. She didn't work, and had no medical problems that would keep her out of the work force. There was nothing in her situation that made her unable to leave that house - her mother and father's house. She's bilking the system, and that has to be stopped. Even if it means forcing her to give up that child for adoption.

Let me repeat that in case I came across vague - A situation like the one described above should end in the child being given up for adoption to a family that actually has the child's best interests at heart. It's cliche, but we have to think of the children.

What about two babies? When does two babies become too much? Well, obviously if one baby is too much, someone shouldn't have two. We'll skip that rant. The point at which you have to draw the line is, unfortunately, linked to money and ability.

I don't know all the issues involved, and I obviously can't talk for every single person in the world and every unique individual, but at some point you have to look at a situation and say "That's enough."

My suggestion is easy, really - Free birth control for both men and women, and make public assistance more difficult to get for these situations. Make people prove, weekly, that they're out there looking for a job, or at least some kind of income. At the same time it's important to help those people find a job. You're not just kicking them to the curb and saying "tough," you're giving them an opportunity.

Of course, in my little world taking care of a child would be easier due to the fact that there would be free healthcare for the entire country. Medical bills are one of the leading causes of financial difficulty, aside from credit card debt. Take away that, allow for laws that make having a child be something that you first need permission for, and teach proper sex ed through-out the entire country, and we might stop hearing as much about how the child down the street died because of negligence, or how the little girl that goes to school and everyone absolutely loves is actually being beaten every day by her drunken father.

We'd also have that much less to pay for from our taxes. I know that I'm tired of paying for other people's children. Aren't you?