I was struck by what the skipper of the Canadian Curling Team, Brad Jacobs, said recently after their spat with the Swedes, which got them a lot of flak.

“What does the world feed off nowadays? Negativity”. He’s so right.

We have a daily diet of negative stuff – abuse, foul language, criticism, disinformation, etc. – largely served up by social media, but also in the news, and even sometimes directed at us personally.

No wonder it affects our mental health.

Of course, there is a lot that is positive in the world, though it rarely gets reported. We all know some beautiful people. But maybe there is something in our human nature which, perversely, enjoys being negative.

We all have within us that inclination to be critical, angry, even abusive; it’s part of being human. So can we change? Victor Hugo said, “Revolution changes everything, except the human heart”.

Jesus put his finger on it: “Out of the human heart come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly.” Wow, what a list! And yet all of us can identify with at least one of those if we’re honest!

So until we have a change of heart, like the rain, the negativity will keep coming every day and flooding us with human folly.

Good news: change is possible! But we can’t do it ourselves: we will never pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. That’s the myth of a lot of alternative therapies these days – that we have it within ourselves to save ourselves.

But what if there is a Higher Power? He says: “A new heart I will give you and a new Spirit I will put within you”. That sounds like a good promise to me. Worth looking into, I would say.