A couple of years ago I started using the hastag #PromoteThePositive. I was just thinking the other day, why did I start doing that? Then it hit me! (pretty proud of myself for remembering that circumstance since my brain is pretty much mush these days), but I was on Twitter and it just seemed like every story that came out was about something negative! Shootings, rapes, crime, violence, athletes being arrested for one reason or another...on and on--all negative things. Then I saw a small article about something positive an athlete did. They either gave back to their hometown or helped with Make A Wish but it was something that was pretty cool yet it only got a small heading. I posed the question to that article "why are only the negative things these days highlighted? Where are the articles trumpeting the positive?" Someone who was following the article (that I did not know) replied to me with something like "Negativity sells! If it bleeds it leads! you can't be that naive". Well, you can imagine my first reaction as pride was swelling in my blood--BUT I didn't bite. Instead of coming with vitriol and malice I simply asked the question "why not?! Why can't we promote what is positive in society?" From there I decided I was going to be the one to get that train moving if nobody else did. Now I know I'm CLEARLY not the first or only one to promote the positivity--I'm forwarding/tagging these articles. But I want to do my part to show that there are good people in this world. There are positive things going on. Not every person is out to do you harm. If you lose hope/faith then we are truly lost.
So, I challenge every person who reads this article find something you can point to that's positive and share it with others. Use the hashtag #PromoteThePositive maybe it'll catch on. "If it bleeds it leads" will still have a dominant place in our culture unfortunately, but we can also give voice to those things and those people doing positive in our communities, lives, world.
...maybe it's just me :)
God bless!
