The Positive Dog: A Story About the Power of Positivity

Negativity Serves a Purpose

The next few days seemed like an eternity. Each morning Matt woke up and looked into Bubba's empty cage. He tried to go back to sleep, but couldn't. He missed Bubba and his sadness consumed him. He knew it wasn't doing him or anyone else any good to be sad but he couldn't help it. He felt like the positive dog inside him had died.

Then, one night while looking at the stars that filled the dark, clear sky, Matt thought about the negativity he was feeling and realized that negativity does serve a purpose; it helps you see the positive in the world, just as the darkness allows you to see the stars. If you didn't have negative experiences, you would never be able to appreciate the positive ones. If you were never sad, you wouldn't know what it felt like to be happy. If you never felt fear, you wouldn't know what faith felt like. If you were positive all the time, then you wouldn't even know you were being positive because there would be no contrast. You would feel the same all the time.

Matt decided that negativity was a part of life and one should never try to get rid of it completely. After all, if there wasn't a negative emotion such as sadness then he wouldn't know what it felt like to miss his best friend Bubba. If he wasn't able to feel anger, he would have never been able to protect himself from the wild animals he met in the forest before he was brought to the shelter. If he never complained, he wouldn't know how good it felt to be grateful and create ...