I was born to be an optimist. Even my blood type is "be positive". Sometimes it can be difficult, but it is so important to try to find the good in a situation. If a person spends all of their energy focusing on negativity, it just breeds more negativity. Likewise, when you focus your attention on the good, it affects more than the superficial issue at hand. It comes down to a choice, one you will make in every situation in every day of your life. Will you feed your hate, or will you choose compassion?
Have you ever met a person with an infectious smile? Of course you have. All smiles are infectious. Laughter is contagious. Happiness is so easily handed out, it seems almost selfish to keep it to yourself. You will lose nothing by giving away a smile to a stranger you pass on the street, but there is so much to gain by such a simple gesture. When that person inevitably smiles back, you've turned your own goodwill into a profit. Doesn't it make your heart lighter to have a person smile at you? In some small measure, such a simple act of civility can lighten the weight on your shoulders. It can make you walk a little taller. It can stroke a bruised ego. That is just one example of the hundreds of thousands of ways that you can make your own life easier by a simple alteration of attitude. The universe, I believe, is a great neutrality and everything you give into it, you get back. You have to, or the universe becomes unbalanced. By that logic, the more love and compassion you let into it, the more you get returned. This is just basic karma.
Your life is the longest thing you will ever commit yourself to, but really, in the grand scheme of things, it is a mere bat of your eyelashes and it is ending. Each and every one of us will live a solitary, insignificant life and when we die, it will inevitably be forgotten. This idea doesn't scare me. I understand how some might find it so, but I must disagree. Wouldn't it be a great amount of pressure to live your life for future generations to awe at? But trying to create a legacy for yourself is just as selfish as letting yourself blend into the background and avoiding the stress. The fact of the matter remains that maybe one of the people you have met or will meet in your life will be 'memorable' and the rest of us will be given our monuments as tombstones indistinguishable from any other in a field of tombstones.
That may not exactly sound like the most optimistic point of view I realize, but I for one always work better under pressure. All you are given is this one, very short period of time to do, see, say and eat everything that you want to do, see, say and eat. With such a limited time here to accomplish whatever it is you as an individual consider to be important, how can a person find the time to be pessimistic? Negativity is contagious. It is like a cancer that infects you and spreads through your mind and body. When a person gives in to their hate, they are feeding it and allowing it to grow. It can start small; a stubbed toe, a rainy day, a hair in your dinner, but it doesn't end there. You let that stew inside you, and nothing is as bright as it was originally because of that one black spot you let into your life. That black spot turns a not-so-great cup of coffee into the-worst-cup-of-coffee-ever and the black spot has grown. As it grows, it gets stronger and stronger until it isn't a bad day your having, its a bad week. A bad life. Hate has the power to rule you, but only you have the power to let it.
What does a person have to gain by putting so much energy into their own misery when it is so simple to twist around on itself. Change it. Rearrange it. Fight it. Right it. Raise a little hell, raise a little hell, raise a little hell. No one is going to fight your battles for you, you have to stand on your own two feet. The point of importance is that you do stand. Stand and fight and make things better. I may be one small girl, but I have an unrelenting optimism. I nurture it and let it grow, and my world looks a little brighter every day because of it. Positive thinking is a little harder to spread, I find. Hate is easy because you will never have to blame yourself. You can be the victim all your life if that's what you choose, but remember you do have options. There will always be hate in the world, but you don't need to let it swallow you whole.
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