My new friend, C, today suggested a blog topic: With death being inevitable, why do we not focus more on the joys of life?
At first I figured I'd save it for a later post, having just covered death, and I wanted to lighten things up. Later I realized (why yes, I can be slow on the uptake), she was right on the money!
C, this one's for you.
*****
"Now is no time to think of what you do not have.
Think of what you can do with what there is."
~ Ernest Hemingway
Okay, perhaps not the most joyful of all quotes but C likes Hemingway, it's the happiest Hemingway quote I could find after a quick search, and I think we can work with this. Ahem...
He's using the glass half-empty/half-full illustration. We all know people in our lives from both camps. Half-empties are always complaining, always raining on our parades, always envisioning how our bright ideas will fail and forever failing in their own endeavors because they've begun with the premise that failure is inevitable. Sad Sacks. Energy evaporators! Who wants to hang with such hangdog homies for one microsecond longer than is absolutely necessary?
On the other, happier hand, we have the half-fullers, who possess the seemingly effortless ability to pierce any cloudy day with self-generated rays of sunshine. They ooze well-being. They don't merely see the bright side of any situation, they are the bright side. It is impossible to remain in the dumps (unless one tries very hard) in the presence of a truly happy person because her positive energy is so powerful, so engaging, so irresistible!
With whom would you rather be stranded on a desert island -- Negative Ned, or Pleasant Pam? Kind of a "duh."
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go. ~ Oscar Wilde
We have our marching orders. Excuse me -- our dancing orders. Let's get out there in the world and dance our happy feet off, whaddya say?
2 comments:
I think they can both piss me off! It depends on how my own glass if looking at the time. And on whether I want to wallow or be "chivvied out of it." On reflection, I don't think I ever enjoy chivvying. Pisses me off. But I am learning one lesson (two actually). The first is that if I just accept the way things are, or at least try to find something positive in the negative (rain=no need to mow, bad knee=presence of legs, dog hair everywhere=dog everywhere, haemmorrhoids=...no, forget that one) things are pretty good.
Which perhaps points up the need for more sensitivity by half-fullers when they encounter half-empties, even if the latter is only temporarily so. If I'd bothered to take more time with this, I'd have fessed up to having my own half-empty days, and days when the fraction isn't so obvious.
I'm with you, I always feel better when I can counter negatives with a stronger positive, as you do, and thereby come out in the black at the end of the day. And thanks for the new word (chivvy).
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