From the South

By Andrew Hawes, PM — Jr. Warden

We have all heard the saying "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade!" It is meant as an encouragement towards optimism, towards staying positive and "soldiering on" despite things being difficult.  My personal favorite way of expressing this is "every cloud has a silver lining" - no matter how dark or bleak things look, there is always something positive that can be focused on instead of the woes or stresses in our lives.  A singer that my wife and I enjoy, Andy Grammer, uses a lyric in one of his songs to express this sentiment that also captures the intent: "...everything will be alright -

If it's not alright, then it's not the end."

No matter how you choose to express it, the sentiment is an important one to keep in mind, especially when you are feeling down, or facing a crisis of some kind.  

Some people are the sort who just never got this message, or refuse to take it to heart.  Doom and gloom, end of the world, pessimistic and negative.  Don't be this sort of person.  If you encounter one, try to change their outlook- but don't get yourself down if they don't change or won't change.  Some people don't want to have a positive outlook on life.  I don't know why this is, but I have encountered some over the years- no matter what happens, they see the dark cloud behind the silver lining and choose to imagine it getting darker instead of focusing on the silver.  Someone who wins the lottery and immediately starts to stress out about how much taxes they'll owe, for example.  The issue I have with this sort of attitude is not only that it isn't healthy, it's infectious!  If you are working (and yes, it takes work sometimes!) on being positive, and someone is being irrepressibly negative with you, it is very easy to slip into a similar mode, and start to bemoan and berate the universe.

Don't let this happen to you!  If someone you are with is being negative, and doesn't want to even try to be positive, it's ok to tell them you need to go, or to try changing the subject to one that they can be less negative about, if there is one.

We should be diplomats of positivity, and should try to spread a positive attitude whoever we go- but don't pour your bucket of optimism into a bottomless well of negativity, keep some in it, to give it a chance to refill so that you can keep on sharing it with others.  

In summary, my advice is to keep on smiling, keep on taking the positive view on life, keep making lemonade from those lemons, and keep finding those silver linings.