The Silver Lining

President Reagan was a great story teller. He liked to tell the one about the boy who was so optimistic, his more pessimistic parents became concerned about him. As he grew up and faced the harsh reality of life, would he be able to handle it? Their solution was to put a huge pile of horse manure in his bedroom one night while he slept. They planned, once he awoke in the morning, to have a very serious discussion with him about how bleak life could be, using all that crap as an object lesson. Imagine their surprise when they heard a joyful hoot coming from his room, and they hurried in to find their son going through all that messy stuff with his hands. Horrified, his mom asked him, "What in the world are you doing?" Smiling broadly, he looked at her and said, "There must be a pony in here somewhere!"

Optimism is a great habit to cultivate, and it is a habit. It is a choice, this looking for the good in life. And it can be there. Sometimes it takes a while to find it and you get your hands dirty sifting through it all. Believing that there is something good for us in even the most challenging situations goes a long way in keeping up our spirits during tough times. Believing that every cloud has a silver lining can give us hope.

But let's be frank now. Sometimes it's simply not there. It is all crap and no pony. All cloud with not even a glimpse of silver. It is then that our inherent creative powers can kick in. It's then that we choose to make something good out of our bad stuff. It's then that we take the optimistic attitude to a completely new level, when we take complete responsibility for everything in our lives, and we create the positive outcome for ourselves. We are the ones who make something beautiful out of something ugly. We are the ones who make our own silver linings.

Susan