I remember I used to love to look at the negatives when I picked up my pictures from the drug store (if you have no idea what I am talking about, Google how we had to walk uphill both ways to get our film developed;-), much like I used to notice the darkness of the night sky more than the stars. I also remember being questioned as to why I would rather see the negative and not the positive as if positive were better or right and somehow I was wrong and inferior. It has taken me many years to come up with my answer.

Having others think you are negative is a heavy load to carry — I should know, as I carried it for a long time. That is until I got a handle on not taking anything personally. When someone would say I was negative or they felt negative energy around me, I would take that personally. Who wants to be negative? Positive is what everyone strives for. Positive thoughts, emotions, bank accounts, grades, reactions…. Yet, I saw and felt the negative more naturally. Not all the time. When things are in harmony and balance around me, I feel and experience positive. When they aren’t, I feel and experience negative. The older I got, the more I experienced negative and the less I experienced positive. I grew to hate this. The more I hated it, the less and less my world was in harmony and balance and therefore the less and less I experienced positive. This limited my ability to grow. I simply became stagnant.

Eventually, I began to think I was just a negative person — until I had enough of being labeled something I knew I wasn’t. I have worked very hard to understand myself and my role in the world and, most importantly, I have learned how not to take things personally. To quote Don Miguel Ruiz:

“Don’t take anything personally, nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”

Once I got a handle on this (and as I continued to get better and better at it), I could go back and discover that the reason I am drawn to the negative is that it allows me to see and absorb things being masked by the shadow the light creates. The beautiful people in my life that see and experience positive more naturally, radiate light and allow me to do this. I need them. I know this. The problem comes when these people fear negative, assume I am negative and therefore try to change me or shut me out. I get it. If you simply take the belief given to you and keep printing it over and over without ever looking at the reverse perspective the negative provides, you will continue to see only that which you were given as truth, accurate or not. If it was fear, it will continually print fear.

To function in harmony and wholeness, it takes both the positive and the negative. And although it appears that learning to embrace the negative is hard, it isn’t. It is just different. Just like learning to embrace positive isn’t hard, just different. Just as we are male/female, black/white, short/tall, heavy/thin, Yin/Yang… As we lean toward and favor one or the other, we limit ourselves to being less than whole. When we learn to embrace it all, we become powerful beyond belief. If we label it, we start judging and that leads down a slippery slope for sure.

So back to the picture negatives. The definition reads: “A photographic image showing light, shade and/or color values reversed from the original, and from which positive prints can be made.” Looking at the negative of the image in reverse allows you to see things you couldn’t see by just looking at the event or the print. If you never take a clear and definite leap of faith into the shadow (the space created by the positive and the negative working together), you will never be able to refuse to accept that which you were simply told.

I am not what you say I am. I am not negative. I am light, just like you. I just tend to absorb the light, where you tend to reflect it. I do want to thank you for continually reminding me to use the gift given and the skills learned to question that which becomes visible in the shadow. I invite you to stop trying to get rid of negative and simply allow both positive and negative to complement and support each other as they were meant to. I am only able to offer this invitation, for I myself have had to stop trying to get rid of the positive and simply allow both. Yes, the positive is what I am most fearful of and each time I get up the courage to face that fear, support and love go a lot further than the rejection I so often receive. Just like you.