Positive Thoughts Amplification demonstrates how personal attitudes, whether positive or negative, can significantly magnify, affecting the overall mood of communities.
One of the things I really love about where I live now is the decorative flagpole out front. I know that sounds like a small thing to be happy about, but if there’s joy in the little things, this is one of them.
My neighbors have frequently commented on how much they love my colorful and unusual flags. I put out a new flag every week, but if I really love the flag, I might keep it out for a month or more. The flags I put up are cute, fun, and worth a chuckle or two to lift your mood. The smile I get from the simple act of sharing a particular mood with my neighborhood, particularly a mood of festivity, just reinforces the positivity.
Occasionally, though, they’re met with negativity, but for reasons I cannot fathom.
But whether it’s joy that’s amplified or negativity that’s reinforced, these flags definitely tend to spiral a person’s mood at least one round further. It all depends on where they start.
In the spring of this year, after I took down the Valentine’s Day flag, I put up my favorite flag of about 30 total, which includes my own flags as well as my landlord’s flags. This flag features a giant tree in different shades of green and the word BREATHE. It was a reminder to myself during some work stress to breathe and let the stress pass through me. Various neighbors and dog-walkers commented on how they had never seen a flag like that and how much they loved it.
I can see this flag from where I spend much of my day at my desk. My home office and main writing area, what I call a “goldfish bowl,” was once a porch or maybe a carport, but was filled in on the two open sides with rows of windows and a repositioned door. It’s a beautiful space with lots of light, and my orchids love it. The first thing I do in the morning is raise the shades because I get a 180+ degree view of the neighborhood, with my flag colorfully waving at one side above my colorful planters.
One morning, I stood just inside the door as I put on my running shoes with the intention of walking down to Bayshore Boulevard to see the water. As I reached for the doorknob, I noticed a woman standing at the bottom of my steps. I didn’t know her. I’d never seen her before. After a year here, I know most of my neighbors on sight as well as the Forbici Restaurant employees who park in front of my house, but my neighborhood is also a popular tourist spot, and she looked like she might have been one of them.
She was looking at my flag, trying to read the word BREATHE. The look on her face was one of utter disgust. I couldn’t imagine why. I wondered if she was looking at something I couldn’t see. Maybe a lizard on the wall? Although I could see her from inside my office, it was bright and sunny outside, hot even, and she couldn’t tell that I was standing just on the other side of the door watching her watching my flag. She continued to grumble loudly under her breath, and I suddenly realized that maybe it was because we had a huge drop of pollen in the spring air. The pollen was so heavy this year that it almost looked as if it were snowing big yellow snowflakes. Pollen covered everything, even my car, which I had parked nearby under a tree before Nature painted it chartreuse.
Whether pollen was the actual problem, I’ll never know, because the only words I could make out were every expletive I’ve ever heard—and the word BREATHE.
As I opened the door, I could hear her better. I was about to step out and warn her to NOT breathe if she was continuing to walk north, but instead, she gave me a dirty look and mumbled something about nobody was going to tell her when to breathe and she would breathe when she wanted to.
I almost burst out laughing. Sure, she was probably having a really rough day, or maybe she’s always in that mood, but I knew what was going to hit her nostrils in about 10 feet and it was a lot worse than the pollen!
In the wee hours of the previous Friday morning—this was a Sunday afternoon—a possum bigger than any of the neighborhood cats had crossed the street and died on my next-door neighbor’s property, literally within a foot of the street. Bagging and removing the carcass was a two-person job that I didn’t have the tools for, and since it was on my neighbor’s property and they had lots of helping hands, I figured they would move it within a few hours when they went out to bring in their trash cans.
When it wasn’t gone by noon and the day was getting hotter by the minute and flies had started to gather, I called the City of Tampa because I had learned that they would remove dead animals from the streets. I wasn’t sure if this one had died in the street and then been moved or had actually made it across the road to die but worth a call.
Now, Tampa is the best place I’ve ever lived as far as a city or town taking care of things like this, but in this case, they told me that they would pick up only cats and dogs, not “wildlife.” Since it was not on my property, their official advice to me was to “let nature take its course.” My neighbors—multiples of them—did manage to get the carcass removed and into the garbage the next Monday afternoon, a full day after the stranger stopped in front of my house and cursed my flag for telling her when to breathe.
By the time the woman stood on my doorstep, the dead possum on my neighbor’s property had been rotting in the Florida heat for three full days. The tall shrubs at the foot of my front steps served as a windbreak—and it was a very windy day.
But she didn’t know that—yet.
When I stepped out of the house, she spun on one foot, glared over her shoulder at me, and muttered again, “Breathe.”
She stomped away, still mumbling, and I knew the exact moment when she stepped onto my neighbor’s property—and got the full brunt of the aroma. She wailed and took off running.
All I can say is that the negativity that she directed at such a joyful inanimate object was amplified 100 times over and met her with a karmic slap.
Almost as if the Universe said to her, “Take a deep breath now because you’re gonna need to hold it for the next 50 feet.”
Law of Attraction-themed thriller! Both Lilah and Charlie try to use the Law of Attraction to get what they want but manifest their fears instead.
Leave a Reply