Poison

Sometimes we do not realize that some of the words we use on daily conversations are not the best options there is. And even worse, these words bring negative energy, which I like to believe may have a subsequent effect on how we behave or react. For example, the word lazy, or in Malay, malas. You may not realize how often you use this word in your daily conversations, but let’s look at some of the classics (that I mostly experienced saying them myself).

“Hmm, malasnya nak pergi lari petang ni, mendung semacam je iklim khatulistiwa kat luar tu.”

Or,

“Aduh, susah betul la nak register race marathon online ni. Asyik sangkut je. Malas aku nak layan. Aku pirate kang baru diorang tau.”

Or,

“Hebat betul la diorang ni, almost everyday diorang update blog. Aku sorang je malas update.”

And you may have also heard about the “M-bug” flying around, haven’t you?

I know it is naturally difficult to reflect or observe our own behavior, and specifically our weaknesses. Having some little experience working and living in Japan for 364 days back in 2002, I generally concluded that one of the reasons why Japanese can be as what they are now today is that, they are not lazy. It is so obvious even in their conversations that until today, to be frank, I don’t know how to say the word “lazy” in Japanese language. For what I always hear, they would either say “I don’t want to blahblahblah…”, or “I cannot do blahblahblah…”. I never heard they say “I’m lazy to blahblahblah…”

It may be difficult to prove this scientifically, but somehow I believe using negative words may have direct consequences to how we react, or behave. It is such a poison to our little subconscious brains.

Talking about poison, don’t you think it is also a kind of negative word?

Especially when we talk about influencing another runner into doing something greater. Like motivating them to go for longer distance, or to run faster, or to upgrade from half marathon to full marathon. We tend to use the word poison, rather than any other positive words. How often have you said something like, “I want to poison him/her to do marathon”. Pretty often, right?

But, is it the best word to use? I mean, poison is a sort of negative word in this essence. So, when I woke up this morning and got a little sparkle of idea of what topic I want to blog about today, I came to think about this. About how we should promote using positive words, so that we become more positive minded and behave more positively.

Then I came to think, instead of using negative word like poison, why don’t we use the opposite and positive word like, fertilizer? Just like how we want to grow beautiful flowers or fruit trees, we would use fertilizer and not poison, right? And it would be much better especially when associating it with growing, or influencing, or motivating another runner into doing something better like a marathon. Don’t you think?

Perhaps we might try saying something like, “I think I want to fertilize her to do a marathon lah.”

Eeerrrkkkkk!!!

I think I’ll stick to the word poison lah.
At least it is a safer word. Hik hik hik...