I was deeply inspired by your column about being a hero, but I am so full of negative feelings all the time. How can I ever become a hero?”
Vidya, 19 years.
Basically, there are two kinds of people inside your head. You Plus and You Minus. Before that split, there was only one kind of person — you.
Try and remember those lovely early years. You were just a normal happy baby, innocent, carefree and curious. You’d be selfish, aggressive, angry, but only when you felt threatened or afraid. Once you were cuddled and had a bellyful of milk, you would revert to your charming, bubbling, loving self.
Then something started to happen. People started interfering with your little paradise. They filled it with their own negativity. They brought all their accumulated frustration and meanness and thrust it on to you. Whether it was a mean older brother who beat you for no reason or an over critical mother who ripped you apart with her words or, as you grew older, some relative who tried to sexually molest you, or nasty friends who tore your self- esteem — the list is long, but basically, you started to change. You left that normal happy self behind and started twisting and deforming to the meanness around you. You didn’t know it then, but the deforming was leading you into becoming a negative minded person — the You Minus.
Without realising it, you started enjoying negative feelings. What else could you do? There was so much negativity all around you. There wasn’t anyone around who could inspire positive feelings. Even the filmstars you admired invoked a subtle feeling of insufficiency. You admired them not for who they were, but for who you were not. Your only way out was to become a part of the negativity.
If you are already half a You Minus, your only salvation lies in plunging fully inside with all your wits intact. So what if you don’t have positive energy left? You have negative energy; it’s energy, after all, and can be put to good use. A successful You Minus knows her mind is churning out tonnes of garbage every day — all feelings of inadequacy, frustration, despair, anger and fear. She must learn to convert all the frustration into raw energy. Jealousy can power determination, fear can energise strife. Despair can boost hope, anger can charge your life. Once you know how, it’s quite easy.
As you start this, you will slowly start untwisting without realising it. Slowly, you will start discovering the other you, who went and hid in fear. The positive person who is happy, carefree and content will rejoin and the whole of you will emerge. It’s a subtle transformation — a shifting of gears — as the baby reverts to her charming happy bubbling self. Keep at it. A time will surely come when you start feeling like a hero, waking up each day absolutely happy and great — with that pure energy now powering your life.