"Burst"

Sometimes the world is against me, and I know this to be true because sometimes people say such negative things to me that I have to retreat to my corner and lick my wounds and feel sorry for myself.  In those moments, it doesn’t matter that my little dog nestles against me with her concerned worried face or that somebody said something nice to me yesterday.  Today, this person is trying to ruin my self-esteem and destroy my accomplishments.  I can feel the waves of negative energy hitting my skin like standing in a sandstorm while frying bacon naked.

I’ve had a running conversation for a couple of years with a friend of mine.  He’s a physicist, so he thinks about energy in a physical way.  I’m not a physicist, so I think about energy as an invisible cloud of gnats that moves with me wherever I go, or sometimes like a swarm of stinging yellow jackets.

Our conversation goes something like this… I say something about “negative energy”.  He says there is no negative energy, there’s just energy.  (There might be a digression about the charge of electrons here, but anyway...) He says I’m just getting caught up in the delivery package.  Imagine everyone’s thoughts as red or blue balloons.  Red balloons are positive thoughts towards me, and blue balloons are negative thoughts, and the only difference between red and blue balloons is the color of the balloons.  If I burst the balloons, there’s just energy inside, and all energy is good.  He says I should just be glad to have so many balloons.

I tend to think of this as a nice theory, but in practice I find it just as impossible to accomplish as clearing my mind of thoughts and meditating on my third eye; a practice which makes me internally rage against Hindu mysticism while simultaneously seeking inner peace.  I’ve given up on the whole third eye thing, but for some reason my mind sticks on this balloon concept, which is why my friend and I keep revisiting the topic.

He says that if I’m still having problems with the balloons, start popping them before they hit me.  That way I don’t have to worry about the color of the balloons, I just get the benefit of the energy.  As a result, I’ve quit trying to empty my mind and spend some of my meditation time mentally popping balloons.  Someone tries to undermine me?  Pop.  Someone talks behind my back?  Pop.  Someone takes credit for my work?  Po…  GRRRRR…  Okay, I haven’t mastered balloon popping.

My friend suggested that I create a mental barrier that lets the red balloons in, but screens out the blue ones.  I imagined a barbed wire fence catching the blue balloons, but my red balloons kept getting caught on my mental construction.  He said that was okay, the energy that was in the balloons will still get to me, sans the colored containers.

I felt like I was littering up the world with popped balloons, so my friend suggested blowing the blue balloons back to their senders.  I suspect the blue balloon senders have already received a lot of blue balloons from their dementors though, and getting more blue balloons might just make them meaner.  I suppose I should send them red balloons, but I don’t really feel like sending red balloons to my dementors. 

It’s no wonder world peace has eluded humanity for so long.  I’ll keep working on it.