My friend and her family live in an old but large and beautiful home. In the process of having the house painted, they discovered it was being destroyed by termites — small and mostly out-of-sight creatures that worked without ceasing.
In a similar way, people often go through the crises of life with flying colors. They take time to mourn the traumas and tragedies. Yet, those same people are often being destroyed by the mental termites of negativism, fear, worry, anger and resentment. During the next few weeks, we’ll look at some of these.
One of the most common is negativism. That isn’t hard to understand since we are bombarded with news of violence. If we choose to fill our minds with this, we will be inundated by negativism. We will become pessimistic, unhappy people.
Several years ago, I was speaking to the Junior League of Richmond, Va. The mother of one of the members asked me if I would stay over and speak to senior adults at her church. The following day as I entered the meeting room, I was amazed at the obvious vitality and energy, especially when the hostess told me that the average age of those present was 86.
Seated by a woman in her early 80s, I said, “I like your new church. It’s so beautiful.” Without so much as a smile, she replied curtly, “It’s too big; it cost too much money; I wasn’t in favor of building it.” Realizing I needed a new approach, I thought the weather would be safe, so I said, “Haven’t we been having lovely weather this week?” Still without a smile, she said, “Yes, but it snowed six times this year.” Subsequently, every time I said anything, she said, “Yes, but …”