Don't look at fat people.

Is that good advice? The "ideology" (if you can actually call it that) is that if you look at fat people, they will be on your mind, and soon you will be fat, because it is what you think about, it is what you come to expect.

    Does that make sense? Or is it as plain stupid as it sounds?

    Think about the fat and thin couples, where one is one and the other is the other, you'd wonder how that would work out. If the fat man looks at his thin wife, and he thinks about her, wouldn't he become thin? And the same thing with the thin wife looking at the fat husband? They'd be on this seesaw teeter-totter, always passing each other, one inflating while the other deflates. The hot air moving from one to another, one always shrinking, one always ballooning.

    But life doesn't even come close to working like that, does it? You know that to be true. It is true that the universe doesn't always make sense (or at the very least we might be unable to digest the sense in various things that occur, or we might not understand things at the time they occur, but later gain some vantage point of understanding, or at least we might believe we understand the how and what and why of it) but we know that the universe isn't back-asswords stupid.

    Yes, I do mean STUPID. As in ludicrous, asinine, absurd, preposterous. Ding dong merrily on high.

    However, if you work hard enough at it, you can search through old books and find quotations from good ole Buzzbee Berkeley, Quackenberry Bushmaster, or Jim Bob McGee, all of them using two words together (e.g., "The Secret," um, you know, those two words) such as in:

"There are no secrets better kept than

the secrets
that everybody guesses."
—George Bernard Shaw

    There you go, George Bernard Shaw is now on the record as using those two words, "the" and "secret" (okay, so he used the word "secrets," but it is close, ain't it? we just must close our eyes, or at least one eye, and ignore the "s"), and so now we can list him as one of the great minds that know the secret to the universal genie! How about another, say, someone like Voltaire?

"The secret 

of being boring is to say everything."
—Voltaire

    How about Benjamin Franklin? Do you think a great mind such as his would know all about "the secret?"

"The secret 

of success is constancy of purpose."
—Benjamin Franklin

   You DO see what is going on here, don't you? I don't think George Bernard Shaw, Voltaire or Benjamin Franklin had any inkling of a "universal genie" or a "law of attraction" and yet it is very easy to make it appear that they did (afterall, they did use the key words the secret, didn't they?). Okay, perhaps it can only be "proven" to people who don't check the facts, but that is just about everyone, isn't it? In context, these great minds using the words "the secret" are using the phrase as you or might employ on any day of the week, such as in: "The secret to making great cookies is using ingredients that don't taste or smell like rotten eggs." And yet we are in no way believing that if we think about good cookies that they will materialize before us, provided by the great genie behind the universal curtain, providing us with what we expect, with what we are thinking about.

   The "Law of Attraction" -- did you miss that particular one? That like attracts like. Kind of a discriminatory idea, ain't it? I mean, did you miss the whole thing about male and female, how they are pretty much opposites? Opposites attract makes much more sense, at least Paula Abdul used to think so.

    Think about it, it has been proved that security lights are the best defense against burglars. But if "The Law of Attraction" is true, then putting a light outside to discourage darkness is an act of contemplating the darkness, and in fact will draw more darkness (as well as burglars, and bugs too, lights at night draw bugs, so stop thinking about bugs, and burglars, and they will not materialize, but if you get hungry, you might think about the Hamburglar, and he very well might materialze, probably not to provide much nutrition, but he will steal away your good-eating habits). Yet, that ain't the way lightbulbs work. They tend to drive away darkness (while attracting crowds of bugs). When they start operating in the fashion of "Law of Attraction" (when they don't work, or when they attract darkness, but same difference, is it not?) we throw them out, don't we, we say they don't work, pretty much the way that "expecting the worst" in no way draws the worst to you.

    If it did -- expecting the worst draw the worst to you -- then guess what? Every time you buckled your seatbelt, you'd have a traffic accident, because the act of preparing for the worst is thinking about the worst and like attracting like you would be unfortunate enough to draw what you were preparing against (or else you might start drawing seatbelts galore from the universe, genie providing more of what you are thinking about as your buckle up, as like attracts like). Same thing with automobile insurance, getting it would "insure" that you had an accident. I think the statistics bear out that those who maintain auto insurance have fewer accidents, and those who buckle up are far less likely to crash. In one sense, preparing for the worst ensures that the worst does not happen (not that there is any magic involved, but thinking about something before it happens often aids you in defending yourself against the thing as it is happening, this makes sense does it not?).

    But "The Secret" isn't completely useless, in fact, if you read the book or watch the DVD and then do the exact opposite of what it suggested, you will probably live a full life. And your life will probably be messy. Bad things will happen. And good things. You will have nightmares. And you will lose people that you love. Much in the same way that people who follow the advice in "The Secret" do as well, their lives are messy, they have problems (probably more than those doing the opposite). But that is life. Life is rich, and life is stupid, and life is wise, and life is a big bag of unpredictable order and mannerly chaos.

    Don't get me wrong. I think a positive attitude is one of the best things you can provide for yourself (and YOU are the one that activates the positive attitude, your good attitude can be blamed on no one but yourself, just as the bad attitude comes right back to your own doorstep). I think you can actually CHOOSE to be positive, and that it will improve your life. Not that any magic will happen, some universal genie will focus its attention on you and start showering you with blessings. But the actuality is almost as magical -- no, it is definitely MORE magical, in that if you have a positive attitude your brain will release very different chemicals into your blood stream, and you will look different, people will see you different, and you might actually LAUGH, and when someone close-by does something extremely annoying, you might pause before biting their head off, and suddenly realize that this is one of those "little things" you'd actually miss if the very annoying person were suddenly gone from your life.

    Choosing to be happy is magical, although no magic is involved, no more magic than in that which produces the rainbow, which is about as magical as it gets. Generally moisture, and light, and perhaps some clean air. That's about all it takes for magic to happen. In this day and age, those things are pretty magical all on their lonesome, and rarer by the day.

    If you take anything at all away from "The Secret" let it be this (well, next to a refund, that is), that you can choose, right now, at this moment, to change your attitude. You can actually choose to smile. Choose to let the anger drip off your back like water off a duck's back. Don't get mad at the hucksters that siphon off the money from desperate people, as these hucksters are far more desperate than those they bilk. Forgive them, and choose to buy a better book, a better DVD, a better recorded book from Audible.com.

    And you can choose to make better decisions (such as the aforementioned selections!). You can choose to think for yourself. You can choose to realize that you are making your destiny, right at this moment, instant by instant, and you can improve everything by improving your attitude (well, actually, most of that which is around you won't change, at least not very quickly, not very quickly at all, but then again, instant by instant those things around you very well might begin to react positively to your less sour face) -- at first it will just be your perception. Certainly, it is the same ugly brick wall outside your window. You can think positive or negative thoughts all the day long about that brick wall, and your thoughts won't affect it in the least, not even at the atomic level.

    You will start to notice the character of the brick wall. You'll notice chips or scratches or imperfections or weathered edges, and you will begin to realize that the brick wall is on a journey, just the same as you,  traveling through time, and very well might outlast you on your respective journeys. And you will suddenly realize that you are thinking thoughts that you have never thought before.

    And that realization is more important than anything you will find in any of the countless books on "The Secret." 

    Don't be taken in by sloppy slip-shod fables. Seek Truth. 

when papa was a little boy

www.DouglasChristianLarsen.com