would stay away.
Exactly seventeen minutes after purchasing the cold medicine in the pharmacy at the airport, I found myself anxiously entering another branch of the chain at the main train station. “One tick spray,” I heard myself cough.
“With pleasure,” said the clerk—who looked eerily similar to the pharmacist from the airport, another trick of the mirror neurons.
Two hours later, I was home. I lowered the blinds and sat alone at the table, sprayed and stinking (for as we all know, the more of a remedy you use, the more effective it is).
“Tobi, what on earth happened?” my wife asked. “Why would you close the blinds in the middle of the day?”
“We’re at war, my darling. 234 Europeans have died in misery,” I whispered, in a panicked voice.
Now comes one of the reasons why I love my wife so much. Calmly, she took a calculator and divided 500 million by 234. On this basis, the risk of dying from a tick bite in Europe lies at one in just over two million. I rolled up the blinds and placed the vial of chemicals in the hazardous waste. It’s vital to be mindful about the messages you let in. Think carefully about the books you engage with, the news you read, and the TV programs you watch. When it comes to someone like my Aunt Hilda, there’s no point asking how she is: all you need to know is in the “bio-weather” report. Toothache is rife in the north, backache in the south, and allergies in the west.
Biowetter = Bioweather, Zahnschmerzen = Toothache, Allergie = Allergies, Bauchschmerzen = Stomachsche, Rückenschmerzen = Back Pain
List five varieties of energy-vampire media that you consume or have consumed:
If there’s one takeaway from this chapter, it is that you should spend as little time with energy vampires and their panic-inducing media as possible. Incidentally, this negativity also claws away the valuable blue “life particles” you can never get back. If you’re wondering exactly what these are, keep reading.
I have rather a personal history with these life particles. Rita and I were in southern India a few years ago and found a magical place, home to a group of people who had made personal growth their life’s goal. They helped the local community and distributed books on the street to educate people about personal development. After we talked to them for some time, they took us to a temple with a huge mural. It told the viewer an important story.
When we are first exposed to the light of the world, we are full of little blue globules, the so-called “life particles.” Energy vampires feed on these particles. Every time we come into contact with an energy vampire, a small globule moves from us to the vampire and is lost forever. As a child, we have lots of these blue globules and are full of energy and visions for life. But our number of globules is limited, and if we consider how many times we surround ourselves with negatively-minded people, it becomes clear that we need to take great care of ourselves and our resources. What’s more, whenever we are negative about ourselves or another person, one of these globules bursts. No wonder some people feel so tired and fed up—their supply of life particles is probably depleted.
How long is the list of energy vampires in your immediate environment? Write down the names of five people who do not add value to your life and are most effective at depleting your life particles:
Rita and I were at sea on a cruise ship, where my task was to train the staff and get them ready for the upcoming holiday season. You might assume that being a member of the crew is a relatively easy job. If you did, however, you’d be failing to take into account the guests themselves, who bring their own quirks and do not suddenly become new people by virtue of being on vacation. Do you see where this is going? Yes, energy vampires on board!
After talking for a whole year about this ostensibly wonderful time—finally, a proper reason not to go to the office!—energy vampires begin to complain with gusto about anything and everything on board. They stand on the deck and discuss loudly how proud they are to have claimed nineteen dollars back from the tour operator because the ship departed ten minutes late. The food is always cold, and the fight for chairs is a nightmare. So it goes on.
It was on such a ship that we found ourselves now, and we sought refuge on the furthest deck, where only very few passengers ventured. Out at sea, I observed a seagull, wings motionless, floating effortlessly on the breeze. “What a great photo op,” I thought. I fetched my camera, adjusted the lens, and focused it on the bird. Before I could click the shutter, a shrill cry came from the right: “Careful! They’re dangerous, these seagulls! If you get bird poo on the lens, you’ll never get it off again!”
The seagull and I were startled, and we peered into the eyes of a stout, embittered woman whose face had been visibly weathered by life. Sometimes, when you meet a person, their wrinkles alone make clear that they have zero sense of humor. I was speechless. Following the seagull’s lead, I absconded from the scene as quickly as possible to avoid further conversation. I told the staff and Rita the story, and we amused ourselves richly with the amount of effort that some people invest in talking down the most enjoyable time of the year and seeing the negative in everything.
Two days later, as our ship cruised across the Mediterranean, we made ourselves comfortable with a cup of coffee in an area overlooking the pool. Six hundred or more people basked in the blazing sun around an area of water barely larger than a paddling pool. Among them was my new, bird-shy friend. As we people-watched and enjoyed the moment, Rita touched my arm lightly. “What a coincidence that would be!” I followed her gaze and spotted a lone seagull gliding slowly over the ship. “Yes,” I answered, “that would be hilarious, for sure!”
We followed the flight of the seagull, and as it flew, its expression changed. Its eyes bulged slightly, its beak opened and its entire body momentarily tensed up. With a soft cry, it relieved itself. A large helping of shimmering, yellow-brown seagull poo shot toward the deck. We watched, stunned, to see what would happen next. Splash, it went, and out of all six hundred people around the pool, the bird’s excrement landed precisely on the belly of the woman who had ruined my photo session a few days earlier. She jumped into the air and immediately began objecting loudly to the bird, the tour company, and even the sea itself.
What caused this chain of events to transpire? Esoterically-minded readers might cite the Law of Resonance. A worker in a chemistry lab, to whom I told the story later, had a different theory:
mass x seagull x plump woman equals…well, the inevitable.
As far as I was concerned, it was much simpler than that: negative attracts negative.
Make a list of the “diamonds” who help to hone and polish you, or those who have the potential to do so in the future:
At this juncture, I want to tell you a story. Did you ever have to change schools as a child? Did you ever have to do it more than once? I certainly did—and that included two different kindergartens! The result was that,
