Peej is on a positive-thinking kick. If it's anything like his Lenten vow I'll consider it a reasonable and healthy development. You can't take thinking too seriously, is the thing. It's best to do in moderation. Once you start thinking about thinking, well, it's a slippery slope, innit?

Fact is, most thinking is negative. It's the nature of thought. I mean, when early Homo sapiens was experimenting with thinking, it wasn't like, "Golly, isn't life wonderful? I've got all weekend to just kick around. Hey, guys, it might be fun to invent fire!" No.  It was like, "Jaysus, it's cold and dark and I've had it up to here with raw freakin' meat, you bitches! Somebody better invent fire before I go medieval on your asses with this mothafuckin jawbone!"

Face it: we think because we have to not because we want to. But it's those moments of non-thinking that are not just positive, but often sublime, and which we regard when we grow up with such fondness. And I'm not thinking exclusively of American Idol and BMs here, but they're definitely high up on the list.

Truth is, taking a break from thinking can be very positive*. If you're afraid that you'll enjoy it a little too much, and stop thinking altogether, just consider the alternative. Lucky for you, it's only a couple of T stops away!


You could end up like this very clean, very trim, very white, thirty-something couple I sat across from on the train the other morning on my way from Cambridge to Back Bay (I have seen much worse Cambridgeside than what I am about to report, by the by, but I will spare you the gorier stories).

It's hard to see people likely younger than me (and there seem to be more and more of them every year) completely dried up, no juicy-juice left in them, and putting the mummified remains of their shriveled souls on proud display on their morning commute.

Some children like to pretend they're adults. Some adults like to pretend they're children. But the worst by far are adults who think they're convincing anyone that they have to pretend to be adults.

The couple in question seemed to be in this last category, pretending to pretend to be adults. I mean, you don't have to play house when you've actually got one, do you? 

They were discussing (and I did get the impression it was partly for their fellow-passengers' edification—to educate and instruct the masses—and partly to display the fruits and nuts of their inner life to a captive audience) how to arrange the furniture in their apartment.

Not just discussing it, though. Madame had some graph paper out—did they get off at MIT? I can't remember—and was drawing the living room and all of their belongings to scale. Monsieur was looking ever-so-earnest—did I detect a tinge of embarrassment, too? For his sake I hope so—and occasionally interjecting weak protests that I got the feeling he thought were expected of him, which Madame would then dutifully address with condescension bordering on contempt.

"Didn't we try the sofa along that wall?" he would wanly offer, hoping that his pitiful protest would appease her, knowing that if he sat reading his paper like he wanted to instead she would accuse him of disengaging from their Process.

"No," she would remind him, sternly, with a flinty look, but with what I am sure she felt was otherwise admirable restraint. "We've been through this. It was along the other wall."

Satisfied that she was satisfied with his participation in their Process, he could relax a bit while she drew a little bowl to scale on the coffee table or a little tchotchke or two on a shelf along the wall, scowling down at the graph paper in grave concentration.

This went on for the duration of their commute, and it was painful to witness, but impossible to ignore. The sad fact that they were not ashamed to be doing this in public meant they either thought other people go about a routine rearrangement of living room furniture this way, too, or, worse, they thought it might benefit the rest of us to see their Process in action.

Ah, the arc of a relationship, from passion to Process—or, for some, it seems, just Process to Process.

Watching them I could imagine the excitement with which they set about to measure the room. The thrill of meticulously recording their measurements, perhaps converting to metric, maybe even calculating volume—heck, why not! Live a little! And all the furniture had to be measured, too. And then (and only then) could negotiations begin. They would get intense, but it was vital to address every concern, since, after all, once the furniture was moved, there would be no going back.

Trouble conceiving. Guarantee it.

All I'll say is this: Thinking should never be a substitute for not thinking.


As for the latest "Positive Thinking" craze. It seems to be something in the air, because I logged onto my yahoo! account the other day—the very day Peej told me he had decided to take the positive thinking plunge—and there it was as the "featured story" on the portal: "Positively Powerful?" The headline ran. Followed by this provocative query: "Does the force of positive thinking always work, no matter what?"

The link for that little teaser took me to my newest guilty pleasure on the web: Yahoo! Answers. We all know this whole wiki phenomenon has its limitations, but almost nowhere are they more nakedly on display than here. Even Craig's List, with its "rants and raves" and discussion sections (including "haiku hotel," where all comments have to be in haiku form, and apparently about poop) isn't this good. Because on CL you don't get pointless points for asking and answering pointless questions, do you?

That's Yahoo!'s clever, if pointless, innovation here. The more pointless questions you ask and answer the more pointless points you can accumulate! And then what? you ask. And then...nothing! Sounds like fun, eh?

For example. Chincychin bagged "Best Answer" (with—count 'em!--three votes) to dr_amar1's question "Is 'positive' thinking always better than 'negative' thinking?" with her answer "positive is a great way to think, but you still have to use common sense."—I mean, who needs Thomas Paine when you've got chincychin? And her contribution has been richly rewarded. She has garnered 163 points! Which is quite an accomplishment for a "Level 1." Whatever that means.

Yahoo! Answers is a species of the "social networking" site that burst onto the scene a few years back with Friendster (there's a good piece in this month's Atlantic about the so-called "social-media revolution," if you want to check it out).
I tried Friendster a few years back, but when Howard Dean didn't answer repeated requests to be my friend, I said screw it. In fact, that was the problem with Friendster. I have all the friends I really need in real life, and if I need new ones I go out and make them the old-fashioned way: bocce ball, anyone?

I will admit that the idea that vulnerable sorts might actually turn to Yahoo! Answers for answers scares me a little. But mostly the questions and answers are as harmless as they are pointless (except for the points you accrue for asking and answering them, of course).

Like "Does the force of positive thinking always work, no matter what?" I mean, does it really matter which answer you choose? You don't get points for accuracy anyway.

Now, I know I've just said that the only "positive thinking" is "non-thinking," but I'll admit that's not a very practical approach to the question. You need time and money to sit around not thinking. And even if you've got that not thinking is not for amateurs. To get there takes a lot of practice.

Personally, I've been using visualization.

Remember The Pit? Peej thinks it's a cute coping mechanism. He doesn't realize I've been busy digging it in the back yard.

He's like, "why do you always have dirt under your nails?"

I'm like, "I'm still digging The Pit, Peej."

He rolls his eyes at me, smiles and tousles my hair: "Oh, you and your ol' pit!"

But I'm flattered he's sort of adapted it, in the abstract, to his own needs. He says he has dug a little pit in his mind, and whenever someone, say, cuts him off in traffic, instead of tailgating them all over the city, following them home, smashing out their windshield with a crowbar and slashing their tires, he just tosses them in his pit, and is done with them.

Apparently he's got some high-tech atomizer in his. I have to ask him where he got it. Unless they have them at Home Depot I don't think I could afford a pit like that at this point, but maybe someday, if I sell enough Girl Scout cookies.

In the meantime I have embarked on a few real-time positive thinking experiments to tide me over, with mixed results. 


The other morning I got on the T thinking, this is going to be an awful commute. Then I told myself, "Self, don't be so negative." So, OK, Self replied, this is going to be a positively awful commute. "That's the spirit, Self!" I said, and we were off on our first adventure in positive thinking! Woo-hoo!

It didn't take but one stop for the fun to begin. At Porter a woman who reminded me of a hedgehog (an observation, not a judgment) got on. She did not look formidable, but I could tell she was skilled. And she did not disappoint.

She sat down right next to me—you know how those red line trains are—they were designed for fairies and leprechauns, apparently—ordinary-size humans can't avoid sitting on top of each other. But she was such a twee little thing, you'd have thought she could consolidate her being a bit and stay inside her own little chalk circle.

Thing is, when you're in a mood like that, you're a magnet. She was just drawn to me. Particularly her elbows. She sat down, elbowing me in the process, hoisted up a huge bag—more elbows—and rooted around until she found a bottle of Diet Doctor Pepper in there, which she opened with a SHHHPPPTTTT! Literally passing gas.

Now, my aversion to consuming anything on the T is well-documented. Bottled cola is probably the least offensive, but she managed to make it somehow especially horrifying by lifting the bottle to her mouth, taking a sip, sip, sip, at metronomic intervals so precise you could've set a nuclear clock by them. And this went on and on and on, for, like, three stops.

Tiny little sip,
and beat,
and tiny little sip,
and beat,
and tiny little sip,
and beat...

You get the picture. And there was no way to ignore it, since she was using that sharp little elbow of hers to lower and raise her bottle. And it was in an unnatural position a couple of inches from my chin. Yes, she had her victim right where she wanted him.

As we approached Park she started preparing to get off the train, digging in her oversized bag for a safe place to hide her Diet Doctor Pepper from herself so that at some later point—perhaps her commute home—she could annoy someone else rooting around trying to find it. It was all part of her little shtick, I could see.

By her elaborate preparations I knew she was going to get off at the same stop as me, and that she knew it, too, and was going to make it a point to be in my airspace as much as possible as long as possible. Why? Because she has not had sex in fifteen years. I hate to say it, but it really is that simple. (Note to the ladies: if you elbow a guy on the T, he will think "she wants me." Just so's you know.)

Anyway, I decided to get up before she could, and to give her a taste of her own medicine I gave her a little bit of elbow for good measure. I am not a very fussy person about coming and going. I am a minimalist when it comes to movement (crunches don't take much at all, in fact), so it was an awkward moment of not very well-concealed pettiness on my part which I would later regret—but only mildly—for reasons that will become clear any minute to the attentive, karmically-inclined reader.

I bustled off the train at Park, although I am not a bustler, and thought I was safely ahead of her, but somehow—I swear to God—she ended up right in front of me on the stairs up to the green line. I jostled ahead of her again, only to find her in front of me again a couple minutes later on the platform. She was a master. I could not escape her.

She got on my train, which was packed. I was standing on the steps, and she was right above me, her elbow firmly planted in the crook of my neck again. But the good thing about it was there was no way she could get off at Arlington in front of me, if she was getting off at Arlington at all. So when we got there, I leapt off the train and dashed up the stairs and out of the station, and I didn't stop running until I had reached Au Bon Pain, where I was going to get my morning cup of coffee and a pastry.

I had forgotten all about her when I got in line, but all the sudden there she was, right in front of me again. Seriously. Freakin Ninja. I narrowed my eyes to slits and shot several tiny daggers at her through them as I left the restaurant, emboldened by the knowledge that I would not be seeing her again. In a moment I would be safe at work.

But here, gentle reader, comes the twist. I was settling in when she passed by in the hall! She works in my building! She's a colleague of mine! What are the odds?

Result: POSITIVE!  Yes, Positive thinking definitely worked here—it was, indeed, a positively awful commute, just like I thought it would be! Gosh, was that easy!

Stay tuned for more Adventures in Positive Thinking coming soon to a blog near you!
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*I have been thinking of producing a line of de-motivation CDs to help with this—I'll keep you posted on my progress, maybe even get that podcast up and going some day soon.