Bad Filters - Good Filters

The idea for this post came to me as we were sitting with a group of friends in a Spanish restaurant in Brussels in November. A friend of mine started complaining how dirty Brussels is, how terrible the weather is, how many Arabs there are in the streets. I was struck once again how some people seem to filter out the good things and leave only the bad things or mostly the bad things to penetrate their minds.

There are other people however – and I fortunately belong to this category – who have a predisposition to filter out the bad things and let only (or mostly) the good things in. I don’t know where this comes from – being mostly positive or being mostly negative - but it is a natural thing and rarely the result of deliberate attitude. I don’t know. I simply think that subconsciously I feel that there is so much negative energy around, that if one surrenders to it one will perpetually grope in some endless mazes of pain. And…isn’t it true that there is so much beauty, love and pleasure around that it would be enough for several lives?

So, the conclusion for me is, let’s clean the good filters – those which let the good in and filter the bad. Because, to take this particular example, Brussels is a lovely and charming place with excellent old and modern architecture, interesting cohabitation of French and Flemish cultures, curious bilingualism, tons of ethnic restaurants (in 4 nights I ate in Maghreb, Greek, Brazilian and Spanish restaurants), terrific museums and a great variety of culture they say.