"If you want to be happy, be." -- Leo Tolstoy

I'm told I can be annoyingly optimistic at times, because I always try to turn a situation into a good thing if I can. Why? Because life isn't worth it otherwise! If you're going to be negative and cynical about everything, then you will not be happy. Maybe you get some sort of sick pleasure from being pessimistic or depressed, or some weird satisfaction, but that cannot and will not last. If you want to enjoy life, really enjoy it so much that your heart is light and a smile comes easily to your face, you've GOTTA let things go and look on the bright side of every situation.

That's just how I see it. Life is much more enjoyable that way. Anecdote time: One time when I was in France, a train strike in Nice made it so that I couldn't get from Nice to Paris and then from Paris to London, where I was supposed to fly back to the States the next day. The attendant said only, "There's a strike. You'll have to go to Paris tomorrow." So I spent the next several hours trying to find suitable transportation to London that day so that I could fly back to the States the next day. I was able to get a flight, luckily, but that silly train strike had cost me about $330 USD. As a starving college student, that's a lot of money! But hey, I was in France! I got to spend a little more time with my friend P (who I was leaving behind in Nice), and I didn't have to spend 8 or more hours on a train...which I wouldn't have minded anyway, for that matter. Rather than mope or rage about how those jerky train attendants were on strike for the day, I looked for the positive side. At least I was able to get a flight out and didn't have to spend $600 or more on another flight from Europe back to the U.S.! Now I can remember that experience as one that was expensive, but whatever...I don't laugh about it (there's not really anything funny about it), but I am indifferent to it instead of bitter or angry.

This is not completely random; there was something that inspired this post. I've been thinking about a couple of my friends who have been rather negative lately, but the trigger was something else. This morning on facebook, one of my facebook friends had written for his status, "On the bright side, my wicked cough is giving me chiseled abs..." Talk about seeing the good no matter what! I think in that case, if I wanted to be positive about it, I'd be grateful that I was getting rid of all the grossness from my lungs and happy that it meant I was almost done with being sick. But thinking about how your cough will give you chiseled abs? Now that's looking for the positive. As recorded in "The Secret Room", a woman in a Holocaust Concentration camp was grateful even for the fleas: they were so thick in their work area that the guards wouldn't go out there to beat and force the women to be silent, so she was able to have limited conversations with the other women.

While most of us won't have to go through something as difficult and oppressive as that, we can learn from Corrie ten Boom and be grateful for the fleas, or even from my facebook friend and be grateful for a cough. Life's too short to spend it being miserable anyway. Let's smile and laugh our way through, shall we?