Don't Know Any Better

1/15/2016

Turn off the news, and tear up the daily paper. No news is good news.

If you can't remember what it was like being a kid, then watch one for a while, the younger the better.

What you'll notice is that they will do anything that comes to mind, playing in the mud, running in circles, or just standing there laughing, or screaming.

As the old saying goes, “They just don't know any better.”

Children and even you, start out with zero information and experience. They don't know that anything is good or bad. To them it just is.

Now stop and think for a moment, and try to remember anything you've done without an anticipated outcome, anything at all. Is there anything that does not bring to mind a list of what-ifs, shouldn't does, or other worries.

No?

That's because, unlike a kid, your memory has been stuffed with a staggering amount of memories, detailing what could happen with nearly any action you can imagine, from getting out of bed in the morning, to crawling back in at night, and a world of things you might do in between.

The problem of course is that the vast majority of those “possibility” memories are not yours, and also, unfortunately, are negative.

From the very first word you hear and understand as a child, you are bombarded with negative outcome information. Don't do this, stay away from that. Don't talk to strangers, a personal favorite. Just try and name any one in your life that was never a stranger.

To be fair to parents, it's in an effort to protect you from one danger or another.

You may still remember being told that a match will burn you, but can you remember anyone explaining anything you could do with that match besides burning yourself?

Your whole life people have been telling you the dire consequences of any particular action, you may be anticipating, to the point that many have become humorous catchphrases like “you'll put your eye out.”

In fact, 99.9 percent of the time that doesn't happen, life is good, and you don't shoot your eye out, chop your hand off, or get mangled by the monster lurking under your bed.

Unfortunately the sad fact is most adults, long after they have left their parents protectionist fears, continue to bombard their life with negative outcomes to anything they may ever think about doing, to the point of not doing a lifetime of things, for fear of what could happen.

They go day after day, reading the paper, watching TV, and listing to the radio, for the most part, stacking one bad memory on top of another. Remember, these are not their experiences, but belong to someone else. Someone, someplace, sometime, has something horrible happened to them, while doing something.

Even if you're an optimist, that negative outcome is added to a file in your memory. The file that Will be opened when ever you consider doing what ever action that memory relates to.

Want to go for a walk in the park today ? Remember that guy in wherever who got killed, the lady who got raped, the child that got kidnapped?

It doesn't matter how far away, or how long ago. When you think about taking that walk, your memory will run through the possibilities. Depending on where you are at on the positive/negative thinking scale, and how many of these worthless negative memories you have stuffed in your head, you may just close the door and go back to watching the TV.

Yes, kids don't know any better, but show me one grown up that is happier or has more fun dealing with the unknown!

Krash

Place Mark Books
Krashs Place