{"id":42720,"date":"2024-11-19T12:00:28","date_gmt":"2024-11-19T03:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/?p=42720"},"modified":"2024-10-27T12:26:38","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T03:26:38","slug":"the-dark-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/essays\/the-dark-side\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dark Side"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let me <strong>preface<\/strong> this by saying that I am not a positive person, but neither am I a negative person. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that I am both. I think it\u2019s important to feel that it is completely fine to feel sad or angry when times are difficult, because it is bad for our mental health to try to convince ourselves that everything is OK and that we are only worrying for no reason when everything is not fine at all. If times are difficult, why should we try so hard to be positive?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Society often tells us to smile and try to be positive, usually to make others comfortable. Why is it our responsibility to hide our true feelings and make others comfortable, though? When bad things happen to someone, their family and friends often tell the person to \u201cStay positive!\u201d \u201cIt could be worse.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re thinking too much.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ll get over it.\u201d \u201cLet it go.\u201d These are often expressions mental experts advise never to say to someone who may be experiencing depression. Maybe their situation is not something that will go away if they just \u201cstay positive\u201d or if they just stop thinking about it. People could be experiencing many kinds of difficult situations and they do not want to be okay with that situation, and why shouldn\u2019t they be allowed to feel bad?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>What I am saying is, I think we are <strong>going<\/strong> <strong>about<\/strong> this topic all wrong as a society. What we should do when we\u2019re facing a difficult situation is, more often than not, to not try so hard to \u201cstay positive.\u201d Instead, perhaps we should recognize and admit there is a problem, acknowledge we\u2019re going through a difficult time, react in a way that we deem appropriate to let out our negative feelings, and then try to <strong>figure out <\/strong>where to go from there. Trying to hide your negative feelings and just try to stay positive is not a constructive way to spend your energy. If you want to scream, go to the beach or the mountains or karaoke and scream. If you want to cry, let your tears out. If you need to hit something, I highly recommend going to an arcade and playing the taiko drums, or maybe taking up kickboxing or maybe some kind of sport. Only trying to stay positive will not help you overcome the difficult time, it might even make it worse. Overcome the difficult time by facing the problem <strong>head on<\/strong> and then try to find ways to improve the situation. You might be going from minus 10 to minus 8 and you\u2019re still not \u201cpositive,\u201d but any improvement to the situation is better than no improvement or pretending everything is fine.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A visual representation of how staying positive does not actually help is a comic that has become a viral <strong>meme<\/strong>. The comic shows a dog sitting at a table in a room surrounded in flames calmly smiling and telling himself, \u201cThis is fine.\u201d He then proceeds to sip from his mug cup as he melts from the heat. Just staying positive will not save him from the dire situation. However, it\u2019s important to note that just panicking would also not solve anything. Overcoming such a situation is not to be positive or negative, but to recognize the existence of both. I believe the balance is perhaps the single most important thing in overcoming difficult times.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s all about the yin and yang of life. Learning the balance will help you overcome some of the most <strong>trying<\/strong> times. Don\u2019t be so afraid to go to the dark side. Welcome it. However, don\u2019t just stay in there. The other side\u2019s pretty cool too.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Loki<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Vocabulary<\/strong><br \/>\npreface (verb) \u2013 to say, do, or write something first<br \/>\ngo about (something) (phrasal verb) \u2013 to begin to do or deal with something<br \/>\nfigure out (phrasal verb) \u2013 to understand or solve something<br \/>\nhead on (adverb) \u2013 directly with determination<br \/>\nmeme (noun) \u2013 a cultural item in the form of an image, video, phrase, etc., that is spread via the internet and often altered in a creative or humorous way<br \/>\ntrying (adjective) \u2013 difficult; annoying; irritating<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let me preface this by saying that I am not a positive person, but neither am I a negative person. Maybe it would be mor\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":42721,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42720"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42722,"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42720\/revisions\/42722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oneup.jp\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}