The Power of Positive Thinking.

That's right ladies and gentlemen, you can now have ANYTHING you want. All you have to do is...(drum roll please...I said DRUM ROLL...) THINK POSITIVELY!! It's that easy, Ladies & Gents, boys and girls. If you want an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle, you can have it as long as you think positively. Ignore those awful naysayers who tell you you'll shoot your eye out and think positively and ANYTHING can be yours. That's right ANYTHING... You want a new car? It's YOURS, You want a house? It's YOURS! You want your brother to get out of prison? Oh...Sure, WHY NOT? You want your decrepit old dog to get BETTER? Uhhh...OK... You want your dead hamster Fluffy to come back to life...uhhh...sorry kid, it's not going to happen.

Ok, so I don't believe in those fake impossible cheesy versions of "the power of positive thinking", but I do think that a big part of how you deal with life is the choice you make to take situations (crappy or otherwise) and be positive or negative about them. I know many people who are pregnant right now, and often the first response I get from people when we talk about them is: "I thought of you and how you must be feeling right now...(and then in a tragic, sad tone) how are you?". Well, to be honest, sometimes it's hard for me. But that's MY personal issue to deal with, and in the grand scheme of things, how can I be anything but SUPER happy for my friends who are looking forward to a baby. My sadness does NOTHING to diminish the happiness I have for them, and personally, I'd rather talk to you about how happy I am about them than make it #1 about me and #2 a negative conversation.

People tell me how tragic it is that I lost my mother (and she was SO young) is the comment I often hear. I know a student who lost her mom in Grade 8, and her Dad was diagnosed with cancer in her Grade 12 year. I can choose to live my life feeling sorry for myself for what I'm missing, or cherish how long I did get to enjoy my mom. And don't feel too sorry for the girl who lost her mom in Grade 8 - she got her until then! Do you see how it's all in the choices you make and the perspective you have?

And what does this perspective allow me to do? It gives me permission to go on living. Rather than burrowing down into a little hole of self pity and making everyone else's life only be experienced directly in relation to MY life - their happiness is only reflected in how sad I am about what I am missing, and their sadness isn't as great as mine either, for whatever reason (I once had a grieving soul tell me "yes, but at least you KNEW your mother was dying, mine just had a heart attack, and we had no time to prepare". I could have rebutted with "Yes, but your mother saw you have children, saw them graduate from high school, saw you live a happy and long life, and you had her until she was 70", instead, I saw that she was coming from a place of loss and grief, and that this situation had nothing to do with "poor Deb" at the moment, and much more to do with allowing her to express her grief however she wanted.). All that to say, other people's lives are connected to mine, but not a reflection of mine. I have the opportunity to experience joy as well as sorrow. God gives us laughter and pain and by looking at life positively, I see each in both. My joy is only made deeper by the understanding I have of sorrow, and my pain knows hope, and my laughter comes from a place through pain, not denying it.

If you're NOT a positive thinker, it's a choice you make, with each day, with each moment. Choose to look at the world positively, because it develops a habit that will make you a much nicer old person to live with. If you chose now to look at the world negatively, where will that put you 10 years from now? Unable to joke about the bad stuff, and looking for the cloud behind every silver lining.

This is probably pretty rambling, and that how I'm going to leave it. Search for the gems, and let the rest sit. Don't critique it (you negative personality), find the good in it, and let the rest well enough alone. In the end, I'd rather be able to make dead mother jokes (which I do), than have every highlight for the rest of my life become a sad moment of missing my mom, or Stretch, or my pet hamster Fluffy. *sigh* Fluffy...