Timmy Burns

I'm starving and I'm about to run out the door. In a slightly surly mood from work I don't want to pull anything too complicated out of the pantry so I go for the cashews. A tasty snack that's got a good protein content and a reasonable amount of fat for some energy. I'll need it since today was my first day back at kung fu in two weeks.

I hop in the car, still feeling less than perky and head off. I notice that a small gnat or mosquito got trapped in my car at some point. With the windows down I hope that the little guy makes it out to freedom before the hot Atlanta sun roasts his soul heartlessly on the dashboard of my Mazda. But he's not going for the rolled down windows, the guy is trying to make it out through the damn windshield!

My attention turns from the bug to the traffic ahead. In Atlanta there aren't many places you can go without stopping at an average of 586 red lights or dealing with people cutting into your lane at the last minute. I pause for a moment to let a lady in. She hesitates and I lean over the center console and glare at her with a blank face. Finally the woman realizes I'm letting her in and she smiles happily with a 'Thank you' style wave. Clearly she wasn't thinking that these native Atlantans would waste their precious time to be a decent human being.

At this point I couldn't help but laugh. Here I am surly from work sitting in traffic just steeping myself in anger - which is just a horrible thing to do. I shouldn't let anything stress me out like that. It has too much of a negative effect. But as soon as I started laughing I realized that this is an excellent idea. When ever you are angry or stressed do something nice for someone, no matter how small, but make sure that it's an unexpected courtesy so that you get a real genuine reaction from them, and your day will instantly brighten.

As I continue on the road I pass by two people walking and I overheard one young woman say, 'I hate..' and when this phrase coupled with my very recent traffic experience I had a profound idea. Does using negative language have a negative impact on someones life? All signs (in my head) logically point to yes because you are conditioning your brain to operate in a negative fashion. And maybe someone has written about this very thing before since it seems like a pretty obvious fact, but I think I'll implement this in my life and see what happens.

Still milling these ideas of negative language (and the condition of your attitude because of it) around in my head I feel a small piece of cashew stuck in my patchy facial hair and my tongue instinctively shoots out to capture it.

But now that I'm thinking about it.. that might have been my friend, the trapped bug.