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Today's
quotation:
I
am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from
nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic
is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet
moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith
in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and
could not give myself up to despair.
Nelson
Mandela
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Today's
Meditation:
It's
funny to see just how many people have the image of an
optimist as a person who's constantly (even annoyingly)
cheerful, someone who never has a down moment, someone
who's constantly spouting upbeat phrases to cheer other
people up. In my own experience, being an optimist
is nothing like that. You don't even need to smile a
lot to be an optimist, if that's not being true to your
personality. An optimist is simply a person who, in
her or his heart, knows that things will eventually work
out for the best, no matter how bleak things look now.
When
I hear people argue against being optimistic, I usually
hear "But look at how terrible things are for
me. I have no reason to be optimistic." And I
always want to ask, "Yeah, but what about tomorrow,
or next week?" What these people don't realize
is that by staying focused on the negative things that are
going on, they're often keeping themselves from seeing
potential good, or even greater good. And because
they see only bad, they've conditioned themselves to
expect only bad.
An
optimist, though, can see something terrible and accept it
as being terrible-- but then try to find ways to create a
greater good from the situation. A woman whose
husband just left her may be struggling to support the
kids right now, but she doesn't have to deal with abuse
any more, and in her current challenges she's going to
uncover a great deal of strength and resilience that she
never knew she had. And while the road may be
difficult, the destination is potentially more beautiful
than any destination would have been otherwise.
Bad
things happen, to good people and to bad. People get
hurt, things get destroyed. But things that happen
are simply that-- things that happen, and it's up to us to
turn our adversity into blessings, to turn what seems to
be a hopeless situation into a situation rife with
possibility and potential. That's the job of an
optimist, whether she or he is walking around smiling all
the time or not. Being an optimist is looking for
the beauty when others see only ugliness; looking for hope
when others see only despair; looking for love when others
see only anger and hatred; looking for peace when others
see only strife.
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