Tigger or Eeyore?
We all are familiar with the age-old cartoons of Winnie the Pooh and his friends. It's easy to laugh at the extreme polor-opposite personalities of Tigger and Eeyore. Tigger is joyful, energetic, and excited about life. Eeyore is monotonous, bored, and depressed about life. In the last few weeks, I have noticed an irritating pattern in my conversations with various people. I have realized that only a few sentences into a conversation, and the person is complaining or negative talking about the weather, their job, their spouse, their kids, school, or just life in general. In one situation, it only took one negative person and soon two others were drawn in and I was surrounded by three people talking badly about their spouses or their jobs. What causes our society to bounce from the Tigger extreme (Life is fine and great!) to the Eeyore extreme (Life is horrible and everything is miserable). I know life IS hard and we need to be real and vulnerable to people know we know well a