Positive Business

Monologue - Christopher Durang's Laughing Wild: Man

MAN: I used to be a very negative person. But then I took this positivity workshop that totally turned my life around.
Now when something bad or negative happens, I can see the positive.

Now when I have a really bad day or when someone I thought was a really good friend betrays me, or when I’ve been hit by one of those damn people riding bicycles the opposite way on a one-way street, so, of course, one hadn’t looked in that direction and there they are bearing down on you, about kill or maim you—anyway, I look at any of these things and I say to myself: this glass is not half full, it’s half empty.

 No—I said it backwards, force of habit. This glass is not half empty, it is half full.
 Of course, if they hit you with the stupid bicycle your glass will not be half full or half empty, it will shattered to pieces, and you’ll be dead or in the hospital.

 I’m trying to be positive, that’s what I’m doin’ with my life these days.

 Half full, not half empty. I had to say myself : you do not have cancer—at least not today. You are not blind. You are not one of the starving children in India or in China or in Africa. Look at the sunset, look at the sunrise, why don’t you enjoy them for God’s sake? And now I do. Except if it’s cloudy, of course, and you can’t see the sun. Or if it’s too cold. Or if it’s too hot.

 I probably need to take a few more personality workshops to complete the process. It’s still not quite within my grasp, this being positive business.

But I’m making great strides my friends don’t recognize me.

And it’s hard for me to be positive because I’m very sensitive to the vibrations of people around me, or maybe I’m just paranoid.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60HCRQZQNr8