Trains…
Greeting dear friends & fellow navigators, & welcome to my world this week. There is a strange thing about certain trains. Some of them look harmless when you step in. They hum softly, promise a short ride & pretend they are taking you somewhere familiar. Then the doors close, & the landscape begins to blur; before you realise it, the train is moving faster than your intention.
Negativity feels a lot like this. It offers a seat without warning & it has no stops built into its route.
Sometimes, it starts with a small complaint, or a careless remark, or a tiny puff of judgment released into the air. The mind convinces itself it is only stretching its legs, only offering commentary, or being perceptive. But every remark adds coal to an engine growing louder than reason. Before long, the tongue discovers it can outrun the mind, & it does so with a reckless sort of joy.
What unfolds next is like negativity constructs a room & then invites the world to enter. A person becomes the place where other people deposit their stray irritations because they know those irritations will find a voice there. It is easy to confuse this with importance. Someone hands over their resentment & waits for it to be shaped into sharper words. Someone else drops an opinion they do not want to be accountable for. The negativity becomes the shadow of other people.
But speaking poorly of others never reveals the world as much as it reveals the speaker. It is a confession disguised as commentary. A person who cuts others down in conversation is often trying to stitch something within themselves.
Over time, the spiral begins. Negativity chooses to pull a person inward until observations arrive. Small flaws seem louder than they are. Even praise begins to feel like a currency to be rationed. The mind becomes a lens & remembers to magnify what is unpleasant but forgets to recognise what is good.
Yet, negativity does not feel like poison when it is radiating. This is the trick. It feels like participation. It feels like clarity. It feels like a small burst of superiority, but superiority is a cheap fuel. It burns quickly & leaves the engine hungrier than before.
There comes a point when the spiral reveals its real cost. The world starts offering distance instead of closeness. People hesitate to bring their softer parts into a space to echo with criticism & wired to amplify faults. No one wants to become the material for someone else.
Negativity becomes a strange form of self-exile. A person walks around convinced they are reading others accurately. The reversal never arrives dramatically. It arrives when a moment interrupts the familiar momentum. It begins when you realise the train is moving in circles & the view not changed for too long.
Stepping off a train requires a pause long enough to remember what openness once felt like. It requires a redirecting of attention toward what is unforced & unguarded. The train of negativity may be tireless, but the passenger is not bound to it. The moment someone chooses to stand up, the illusion breaks, & the landscape slows. The doors appear again & outside waits a world looking different when the mind is not already convinced it knows what it will see.
You can walk back to a place where your mind is allowed to be open again. Where people approach you not for the harshness you offer but for the space you hold. Where you are not the centre of a vortex, but a person with a clear view of the world, able to see both its flaws & its small, unexpected gifts.
You can choose the moment you return to yourself. When you do, the world has a way of meeting you with the kind of surprise to remind you why it was worth stepping off.
Just few observations again dear friends & provide an opinion in my world. Thank you for stopping by, I appreciate your being here. If my journey encourages you also, all is well with my soul. Looking forward to next week; this is Kenn Butler in Paradise, Nelson with best wishes.
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