Threshold

"To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. 

To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day."

 - Winston Churchill 

You only have to build one block tower and have an older brother wreck it to know what daily life is to someone who has been abused. Seems like no matter what you attempt to build there's some immature prat gleefully waiting in the wings to destroy it and make himself feel like an all powerful godzilla in the process. It could be a family member, a friend, or a coworker, but someone that delights in seeing you fail. You get to the point where you don't want to build anymore, because what's the point? Because in the process of destroying that which was built, the destroyer destroyed the piece of the builder's self put into what they built.

There was an experiment done with a barracuda where it was put into a tank with a large piece of glass between it and live minnows on the other side. In water glass is virtually invisible, so the barracuda saw its lunch swimming unsuspectingly. The hungry barracuda flung itself again and again against that pain of glass until it gave up. The barracuda's spirit was broken and it floated there motionless even when the glass was removed and minnows were swimming all around it, even touching it. The barracuda died of starvation.

Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can break your spirit.

Regardless of how you may interpret things in your own life, everyone has their limit, and none of this "God doesn't give you more than you can handle" BS, or else you wouldn't have had Biblical kings throwing themselves on their swords. Everyone has a threshold when enough is enough. Pushing people to that threshold is the greatest pleasure of the power hungry destroyer or the unconscious act of the obliviously ego-centric. Regardless of the source, the outcome is the same for the person on the receiving end.

In psychology they say that it takes 10 positive comments to make an impact as powerful as one negative.  But sometimes the math of that multiplied force of negatives can be a heavy burden. There comes a time when the emotional bank account is so overdrawn, and you feel so underwater, that you wonder where your next breath will come from. This doesn't help when often these targets are sensitive from the start.

Sensitive and empathetic people are often targets of their polar opposites. In prison studies showed the victim was the one with low self esteem, and the victimizer who thought that he was above others and above reproach. Sociopaths often target empathetic people because they are the first to realize something is wrong and speak out, so they try to control them. And now you know why bad things happen to good people.

It can be a hard thing to relate to if you've never been there. Just like it's hard to fully understand someone being sick if you've been mostly healthy your whole life. It's hard to empathize and put yourselves in another's shoes, and even if you do, odds are you still won't get the full experience. Even empathy can go only so far, but you should try. Because the abused has been exposed to the callous lack of empathy of someone, and needs to be reminded that it does still exist. It may seem like your contributions don't do much because it takes 10 positive words just to equal one of the negative. And that's not even including the negative actions of abuse. Still, every little bit helps to rebuild a builder, who will eventually want to build again. It's not easy to start over.

This is brought to mind because I had been collecting Breyer model horses from a young age. I got one for my birthday each year and often one for Christmas.  Since I started young, I had quite a collection by the time I was an adult, even after giving some up. Still they were such a huge part of my childhood that when they were stolen from the old house while we were moving to the new one, it was a huge hit. I burst into tears in front of Morgan who cried too, not knowing why mommy was crying.

The insurance money didn't cover any of it, and most were antiques and collector's items that had increased in value that you cannot even find anymore. So slowly I've been trying to rebuild my collection, but I don't have a lot of money to spare replacing that which was lost.  And really it gave me the feeling of even more things that I've been trying to rebuild that were taken from me by others.  However I keep having people come along and knock my blocks down. Sometimes it's just clutzy and sometimes cruel, but it always makes it harder to even want to attempt to rebuild again.

The Negative Side of Positivity

So I understand people wanting to be "positive" and such, but all too often I find that it's becoming an excuse for denial and lack of responsibility for their actions. When faced with the consequences of their actions, they demand that the other person be positive or complain that other people are being "negative", and thereby they completely disassociate themselves as the causation in the equation. The fact that the other person responded naturally to their self-seeking behavior becomes the "problem", instead of the self-seeking behavior that actually caused it. Actions have consequences, and you cannot expect people to tolerate asinine behavior and still have healthy relationships. In the words of Ayn Rand — 'You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.'

There is a big difference between unrealistic forced optimism and real synergy. You cannot fix a problem if you ignore or deny that there is a problem.  And I find that those who perceive themselves as positive can't comprehend that they might possibly be the problem. But all too often they cause more problems than they solve. They become a smiling blockade to all real progress using platitudes to give the illusion of motion and support without ever getting their hands tainted with down and dirty reality.

Being positive and confident can be a boon to other skills, but it cannot supplant them. For real progress to be made, a person has to be able to tackle the full scope of a situation, including darker aspects that the "positive" would rather avoid. All too often the "positives" are more than happy to ride on the coat tails of those doing the actual work, and gathering credit to themselves.  However their methods are not as productive as they might think, and more damaging than they would like others to think.