Glass Half Full

Did you ever notice that there are some people you can never make happy? I mean no matter what, they always see the glass as half empty. Nothing is ever good enough and life is never easy enough or happy enough. I feel sad for them. I always try to look on the positive side of life. I greet each day with as much optimism as I can and treat everyone I meet with a smile and give them the best side of me. I truly believe that you have a choice in life in how you look at things. You can choose to look at things with despair or you can choose to look at things with hope. It really is a choice. It takes the same amount of effort to be miserable as it does to be happy. Now before you perhaps think that I might be immune to bad times or might not know what hard days are, I can assure you that I do. I have had my share of really tough times. One particularly rough patch occurred several years ago when I was hit by a drunk driver. I was leaving my oldest daughter’s cross country meet when I was hit. My SUV was totaled and had I been in any other vehicle, I would not have survived. Despite the fact I suffered lifelong injuries, spent 6 months in a hospital bed, almost died from a blood clot and missed the better part of an entire year of my life and my children's lives - I feel that the day I was hit by the drunk driver was one of the luckiest days ever. How can something that awful be considered lucky? Well just a mere 15 minutes before I was hit by the drunk driver, the cross country runners had been running EXACTLY where I was struck. If the drunk driver would have left the bar just 15 minutes earlier, he would have killed several students and injured many more. My daughter was one of the girls running. What if he had killed her? What about all the other parents’ children running that day? I would choose to be the one who was hit a thousand times over rather than think about someone losing a loved one. And if you don’t feel that was lucky enough, right before we left the cross country meet to go home - I asked my son (who was 7 at the time) if he would ride home with his Grandpa. My 7 year old was in a Mommy mood and whined that he didn't want to go with Grandpa; he wanted to ride with me. I asked him PLEASE ride with Grandpa to keep him company. My son relented and agreed to go drive back with his Grandpa. The entire back of my SUV was missing after the accident. My son would have been killed if he had driven home with me. Lucky? I should say VERY! So each day I recovered, I never thought “Why ME?” or “Life is SO unfair”. I chose to feel blessed that I was surrounded by people who cared for me. I chose to feel lucky that I was the one hit. I was grateful that I was still here and still with the ones I love. I chose to be positive and to go forward with hope. I make it a priority to always think of what is good in each day and to go through life with good will and optimism. I have to say that in raising living breathing creatures, not everything is destined to go smoothly. Sad things happen and life is far from easy and at times it does seem easier to just wallow in what goes wrong but wallowing never changes reality. It never makes things better. So choose happiness. Choose to think of all your blessings. Think of fun times, beautiful places, nature’s wonders, puppy kisses, shooting stars, happy moments, treasured memories, all your loved ones near and far, and you just might find your cup runneth over. I know mine does.