Positive Health Online

Sam the Magic Genie is, as its author Brian Mayne says, a book for children of all ages. It is an old-fashioned tale, with the hero, a young boy called Joseph, who was very unhappy, meeting Sam, the magic genie who teaches him how to be happy. Joseph has very real reasons to be unhappy. His parents don't show him they love him, but they demand that he live up to their high expectations. His father, who smokes a pipe as he reads his newspaper, tells Joseph, "You must try harder, and remember, big boys don't cry." His mother tells him, "If you're not the best, you're nobody, and nobody loves a nobody."

Sam takes Joseph for a ride on his magic carpet. They go inside Joseph's mind where the clouds are Joseph's thoughts, and where they visit the Tree of Self, the River of Life, the Sea of Potential, the Islands of Possibilities, Faith the dolphin, the Fingers of Fear, the Life-Fire, the Pool of Confidence, the Ray of Enlightenment and the Sun of Love, and Joseph discovers how to be happy and unafraid.

Sam teaches Joseph to love himself. Of course we all need to care for ourselves, to value and accept ourselves, but Sam tells Joseph something which isn't true. He says, "Learning to love yourself means learning how to think about happy things rather than about the sad things." In fact, to love ourselves we need to accept our own sadness. Life inevitably brings loss and disappointment for which there is no recompense or reward. We should not deny our sadness but acknowledge and accept it because it is part of us. A boy in Joseph's position has the hard task of accepting that his parents see him as an object to fulfil their needs and wishes, not as the person he is. If we deny our sadness it does not go away but continues to disturb us.

Sam also tells Joseph that if he thinks about bad things he will create false fear, whereas real fear is simply the fear of a real physical danger. Joseph's fear is that he will fail his exams. This is an entirely realistic fear. If he fails to do well his parents mightn't inflict physical pain but they'll treat him with contempt, which is harder to bear than the pain of being beaten.

Joseph and Sam encounter Faith the dolphin who tells Joseph, "The key to set you free is to see things as you want them to be." When the Ray of Enlightenment beams down from the Sun of Love Joseph discovers, "If I think the thought and feel the feeling for long enough, it becomes a wish and then starts to happen, whether it is something I want or not."

Sam calls his understanding 'brilliant' and says, "The whole universe is like a big dream machine waiting to grant your wishes."

The author, Brian Mayne, is saying that if you think about good things, they will happen, and if you think about bad things they will happen. This can be self-deluding, dangerous and cruel, as in instances when women suffering from breast cancer are told (wrongly) that it was their angry thoughts which caused their cancer. An individual's ideas do determine what that person does, but ideas without action cannot affect events in the world. If we want a world where we can be happy we need to do more than simply wish for it.

Editor's Note

Positive Thinking has a role within the complex health equation; however, proper limits and boundaries sometimes become confused, when victims of illness or abuse become loaded with the extra guilt of thinking that their negative thinking may have caused their illness or abuse. This is a subject which needs to be fleshed out; we invite comments from readers which we will endeavour to publish