It has long been recognised that attitude is the key to success. Talent and aptitude count for nothing without fitting motivation. That's what's so good about nowadays. Anyone can be anyone, or at least have the right attitude for it, the right glands stimulated to produce a certain cocktail of moods to create a specific state of mind. It's a science. Though I'm just a consumer. That is to say a pill-popper.
My gift is selling. From an early age I was a dabhand at persuading kids to swap their desirable toys for my lousy ones. This left me with few friends, so I abstained. I had the wrong attitude. One with principles. But I'm a ruthless salesman these days. I earn a top salary. And outside work I'm popular. The abandonment of one principle has made this dual life possible. I no longer believe that taking pills is cheating.
If it's okay to take a pill to stop pain, why not take one to alleviate compunction? This is the age of the right attitude. You can't not have it. It comes in bottles. But be warned, everything has its pitfalls.
Take a day from my life for example. One of those anxious days where two important events coincided. Firstly I had a job interview with a company called Suntap, which marketed the latest domestic solar energy generators. I had done my research into product philosophy and company policies, and felt confident of impressing the interviewer. Only the right attitude was missing. But I could swallow that on the way to Suntap regional headquarters.
My second engagement with self-improvement concerned my love life. I had arranged to take a friend's sister out for dinner. I had grown fond of Dana. She worked at the University library, was stimulating to be with, quite shy. I wasn't sure if this was her real self, but I think it was. It was the self she was outside library hours and I had never seen her with a different character. I therefore presumed that she was so perfectly balanced that her natural attitudes suited her from morning to night. I liked that. It was refreshing.
Our dinner date was set for evening, my job interview for morning. No clash, but the double dose of worry got me down. I had no appetite for breakfast. I could have taken a pill to counteract my anxiety of course. But I like to be me first thing in the morning, in a ritual respect for uncontrived reality. I'm no salesman over my bacon and toast. I'm no casanova either. Just an ordinary guy with no strengths in particular.
Before setting out I checked that I had the two pills I needed for the day's attitude requirements. Pink pill and green pill. Both were safely in my wallet. So off I trotted to Suntap House. What a fiasco I was heading for.
I bumped into Dana's brother, a self-appointed arbiter of his family's affairs who disapproved of my intentions as he saw them. It was only our suddenly strained friendship that prevented me from keeping the dinner arrangement through injury. He left in a huff, warning me I'd better not 'go too far'. I wondered what sort of pill he was under the influence of. He was normally so diplomatic.
Anyway, this unpleasantness shook me up. Not that I was deterred from dating Dana. I took a philosophical view. Resentful brothers and jealous fathers are an unavoidable hazard of wooing the opposite sex. Right now I had the interview to think about, and I took the pill for the right attitude to see me through it. Or so I believed. In fact, because of my flustered state, I took the wrong one.
Let me explain about the pink pill, the one I should have taken, the one I take each morning to set me up for the competitive role of selling business software, my present line. It makes a person dynamic, outgoing, resourceful, pushy and, most useful for a salesman, greedy. This exactly sums up the sort of person I am out on the road. Added to my natural eye for an unexploited market, it makes me a force to be reckoned with. I could sell a harpoon to an anti-whaling lobbyist.
So, not until well into the interview did I realise that this super-charger of a pill was still in my wallet, and that what I had in fact popped was the green one, the one meant to turn me into an irresistible romantic for Dana. For a short while things went well. I shook the interviewer's hand, declined coffee, and got down to the business of promoting myself. My qualifications were excellent. I had a track record studded with awards which included salesman of the year many times over. But it was a struggle to verify this verbally. I was sounding more like a tea vendor at a church fete than a hand-wringing commission hawk. But then what did I care? Love would see me through. Very shortly the interviewer lounged back in his chair and asked the question for which a job seeker should always be prepared: "Why do you want to work for Suntap?"
I couldn't help myself. Much to his bemusement, I tilted my head, sighed besottedly, went dreamy eyed, and whispered, "Because it's the most gorgeous company in the world."
That was the wrong attitude completely. But I was unable to correct it, feeling all soft, wobbly and sentimental. I realised, somewhere in the sunblessed daffodil meadows landscaping my brain, that I had taken the wrong bloody pill, but I went helplessly on to lavish flattery on every aspect of Suntap, remarking with boundless admiration on its corporate beauty. Even its logo, according to my enamoured estimation, was a thing of utmost artistic godliness. The compliments simply spewed forth. By the end of the interview my strategy sounded like a desperate marriage proposal.
I left the interviewer's office with the ominous advice not to call him before he called me. I had blown it. I felt annoyed with myself, not to say close to tears with the heartbreak of being spurned by such a smashing company as Suntap. If that wasn't enough, I had wasted the pill which was to have endeared me to Dana this evening, a pill which, as the interviewer would testify, made one sensitive, generous, loving, chivalrous, aesthetic. Ideal qualities for a candle-lit dinner. It looked now as though I would have to be my romantically diffident self instead. Unless I could get to a highstreet dispensary beforehand.
But first I had to go to work (lying to the boss that I'd overslept). I should not have bothered. The effects of the green pill lasted all afternoon and, while winning me many friends, did not produce a single sale. But I pressed on. In a way I enjoyed it. That afternoon was the only time I could ever say I loved my job. I wept when I had to go home.
Washed, changed and in a hurry, I found a moment to nip into the dispensary before my date with Dana. A dispensary is like a pharmacist shop, only specialising in attitude pills. A browse around the shelves can be confounding. To a newcomer, choosing what's on offer can require a pill in itself. There are thousands of different types, boxed, bottled or sold loose. The best advice is to make for the catalogue. And that's what I had to do. You see, the exact pill I wanted, the green pill no. P557/2, was out of stock.
I keyed into the catalogue. A menu appeared on the screen: 1-TASK OR OCCASION. 2-ATTITUDE. 3-CONSTITUENT MOOD. 4-CONSTITUENT QUALITY. 5-COLOUR. PLEASE SELECT. The colour coding of pills was a useful guide. I needed something in the green range, approximate to the unavailable P557/2. The spectrum went from pale green (the lowest of which produced a mild, placid, inanely smiling near-vegetated user) to bright violet (forceful, merciless, snarling near-homicidal maniac). These were the two extremes. I wasn't sure who resorted to them, or for what purpose, though I've heard that bright violet
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