We love drama. We love gossip and all the grizzly details too. No matter how much we deny it, all of us have an appetite for the negative. This is one of the many reasons why shows like "13 reasons why", "Stranger things" and "Game of Thrones" occupy a huge parts of our lives. So why are we attracted towards negatives more than the positives?
Drawing from my own experiences, my interest level is peaked when there is a twisted plot or something is not right. I do love reading about controversies and love watching crime related shows. If a video has titles as "What you have been doing wrong all your life", I cannot resist but hit play. It is amazing how our brain can process hundreds of stimuli and choose to focus on the bad stuff.
You may think that this is a very simple generalization, so let's try something here. Please read the following few sentences:
- Tuscany is really beautiful this time of the year.
- Mo I Rana is one of the cities in Norway where the sun does not set in summer.
- Pokhara is a city in Nepal with a big lake in the center of the city.
- The forest at the base of mount Fuji is famous for committing suicide.
- Berat is also called as a city of thousand windows.
Ok, so try to remember the sentences above. I am pretty sure that the first thing you remember is the suicide forest in Japan. (If you did not, good on you!)
It is not just the big negatives that we focus on. We do that everyday with almost everything. A house can per perfect with an exception of just a simple misplaced towel and we will focus on the towel. We can have lots of admirers who seriously like us but we invest a lot of our attention on the one comment or opinion of someone who does not even matter. We do that in relationships too. We choose to ignore hundreds of good gestures of our partners and dwell on small imperfections or small stuff they did or said.
And although it is not always bad to enjoy a little bit of spice in life, I do feel that our major focus to the negative makes it difficult for us to enjoy life and relationships. I am not going to tell you to celebrate the joys of life like everyone else, what I am telling you is that once you accept the fact that our brain is all drama, it does help to get perspective. At least for me it does. I constantly try to remind myself of the whole list or all the sentences (like in the example) instead of focusing on just one or few of the points. It definitely helps me, so I hope that maybe it will help you as well.