Positive Thinking, Negative Thinking - A Personal Discussion About What Too Few People Understand

Positive Thinking Isn't Always As Easy to Recognize As Some People Believe It Is

It sure seems to me as if a lot of people don't really understand exactly what "positive thinking" is.

There are people who believe that "positive thinking" means never talking about, or addressing, the negative things in life. The minute someone else brings up something that isn't either "all fun and all pleasant", or at least isn't "neutral", those people don't like it - at all.

Then, too, there are negative thinkers. Some negative thinkers only lean toward negative thinking in the face of challenges and negative realities. The most negative among them may find a way to turn even the most positive of realities/situations into something negative. Whether or not such people are suffering from thought-process-altering depression or just from lack of thinking skills is a subject for another time. It is, however, important to realize that depression can make it impossible for those suffering with it to think positively.

Positive thinking is something that people can do even in the face of negative realities. They find a healthy perspective, try to figure out what they might be able to do to solve the problem, refuse to let what's negative stop them in their "thinking tracks". They feel strong and "have fight", and they generally have confidence in their own ability to deal with what's negative and/or at least find a way to live with it without allowing it to detract more from their mood, day, or life than necessary.

When the negative realities are relatively few and/or not extremely serious (in the context of what's truly important in life and what isn't) it can be reasonably easy for someone to keep a positive frame-of-mind in the face of challenging situations or events. Some days can make remaining positive more challenging than other days do, but the process of genuine and skilled positive thinking, itself, means that some approaches to challenges (even challenges to one's own sense of "OK-ness") are often made easier to see, and can also reduce the complexity and seeming overwhelming nature of whatever challenges arise.

Since one important part of positive thinking is to stay away from focusing solely on what is negative, positive thinkers will make it a point to find some of "positive realities" as a way of "re-fueling mental energy". Since brain chemicals are affected by the kind of thoughts we have there's an actual benefit to making sure positive realities aren't left out of the mix of things we allow into our sometimes frazzled or over-burdened minds. Aside from any changes in brain chemicals, however, keeping in mind some of the most meaningful and positive realities in our life (maybe even creating our own little "mantra" about them) can act as an anchor that will keep us from drifting too far away from solid mental/emotional ground.

Appreciating the Most Meaningful, Positive, Aspects of Our Lives: One Ingredient in the Mix When Positive Thinking Is The Aim

It has been found that people who manage to stay happier than other people are those who always feel, and remember, a deep appreciation for positive things they have in life. One of the most common thoughts that can get a lot of people through a lot of challenges is a thought used as that anchor by people who are parents of generally healthy kids who remind themselves that there is, at least, that one all-important positive reality in their life. For the most fortunate among us, being able to remind ourselves that "at least my kids are healthy" can be the little kick-in-the-bottom to doom-and-gloom thinking (and that, in fact, usually kicks the bottom right out of it).

Appreciating their own good health (or at least being free of the most dire of medical conditions) is something a lot of people, parents or not, do. Doing that is a helpful and positive thing; but as much as most of us care about our own health, what happens to us is most often far, far, less important to us than is what happens to our children. The point is that the deeper and more meaningful an "anchor" is, the more likely it is to be effective in keeping us from being washed away into a sea of negative thinking.

Of course, appreciating what we have in our own lives can sometimes only come our eyes are open to, and when we're not running away from, some of the negative realities of others' lives.
Although some people, more than others, just don't take some positive things for granted; many people take positive realities for granted because they've never had reason to be aware that they shouldn't.

Besides having our eyes open to the kinds of challenges that can go on in others' lives, something else that can fuel our appreciation for what we have in our own can sometimes be having had what is most important to us threatened. Something else is that can make us more acutely aware of how appreciative we should be is being close to someone else who has had what's important to him threatened or else had it taken from him, or simply having learned that (contrary to the "it-won't-to-me" thinking of youth and/or most of fortunate of lives) nobody has immunity - only good luck - to some of the most devastating realities of life.

Where the Term, "Positive Thinking", Can Get Muddied in Some Folks' Minds

For a lot of young people, but also for a lot of the most fortunate of people (regardless of chronological age), there is often a need for (related to developmental matters and the maturation process) a certain kind of self-centered thinking that includes, primarily, worrying about and dealing with a set of challenges that might be seen as "routine". That's not every young person, of course, but in general, being young can often mean not having had enough decades on this Earth to have had one's eyes opened to any number of negative realities as much as someone older may have. There are young people who "had their eyes opened" to one or another kind of challenge or negative reality long before reaching adulthood. Even in those cases, however, the kind of awareness they may have can be fairly limited to the smaller world in which young people live. That smaller world includes the young person, himself; his family, his friends, school, and perhaps work. For the most fortunate of young people, what goes on in the lives of people in "the larger world" is something they see from afar.

For adults who have been fortunate enough to live a number of years in adulthood without having more than the "routine" challenges, there can still be a certain amount of insulation from awareness of reasons to deeply appreciate what they have. While some of these more fortunate adults may try not to live lives as self-centered people who lack awareness, it's often that the only we become aware enough to truly be appreciative of what we have is when one or more of those negative realities of life hits particularly close to where we're standing.

The more time we've spent on this Earth, the more the chances that one or more of those negative realities will leave us wrything in the pain from the kick-in-head, or in the gut, that can come with the bad things in life. Sometimes, too, the bad things in life can come down around us; and leave us trying to figure out a way to see past the smothering gray walls around us, and find a new way to punch holes in; or get around, those walls and get to where we can return to a world of the living, or at least see out our windows and see that the sun still shines and the fresh-air is still just beyond them.

Regardless of whether someone has had some big, bad, thing descend around him and build those gray walls; everyone who has a window knows that sometimes when we look beyond our own window we don't see sun. We see night and darkness for anyone who happens to be out there. Healthy, caring, people most often would like to figure out a way to light the night for anyone out there who may be finding his way in the dark. The difference between people who have had to get past their own gray walls in order to get to those windows can be as simple as the fact that thinking, and acting, positively is more of a challenge. Ironically, however, it's sometimes through having learned how to get past those gray walls and to those sunny windows that people gain confidence, coping skills, and thinking techniques that will serve them well when it comes to knowing how to think and act positively.

This isn't to say that the young or the most fortunate among us can't appreciate the important and positive things in life, because they most certainly can, and often do. One difference can be, however, that for people who have had the experience of making their way past those gray walls and to those windows; appreciation of the sunlight can be more profound. In the case of people who have children and who most often realized the day those children came into their lives that nothing else much matters but their well-being and good health, something that can come built into even the heaviest and grayest of walls are often cracks that let the sun come through, whether or not the person had found his way to the windows or doors.

While having, and loving, their own children may be one of the biggest ways in which people find themselves just a little less likely to be smothered by the darkness those gray walls can bring; other kinds of deep and expansive love can help lead to some cracks in those walls if/when they descend around a person.

Being able to stand at a "window" and view the daylight when it's there, or being able to look out and view other people's darkness when that's we see, can appear to place most people (regardless of how many of those gray walls have descended on them) in the same position - standing in their own little home and looking out the window. Some people choose to pull the shades down when darkness is what they see outside their window. Others may turn on their porch- and driveway- lights as a way of trying to help. Still others may try to find, collect, or afford flashlights to be shared with some who struggle in the outside darkness.

Why Some Positive-Thinkers Can Appear Negative to Some Other People

If you think of everyone's outlook on the world and on their own life as being in that position of looking out one's windows you can realize that what anyone person sees (and does or says about what he sees) can be very different views.

First, there are those people who look out their window when there's daylight outside AND when night has brought darkness. We can't tell much about whether this group of people are positive thinkers yet, because all we know is that they are at least paying attention to what's outside the window. We don't necessarily know whether they've had to break their way through any "gray walls" to get to the window. Neither do we know how many times they may have had to do that.
All we can see is that they are seeing the daylight and the darkness, depending on when they're looking out.

Then there are people who only want to look out when the sun is shining. They'll pull shades, draw blinds, or turn their backs on the window when it's dark outside. These are people who either don't want, or can't tolerate, seeing darkness. They won't look out, pull the blinds, and don't want anyone else telling them what's out there. Maybe they're immature people who aren't emotionally ready to deal with seeing darkness. Maybe they're people who have seen so much of it in over their lifetime that they reached a "saturation point" when it comes to seeing "yet more". There could be any number of reasons someone wouldn't want to look out that window at night. The point is there are some people who refuse to, and can't tolerate, anything but seeing sunshine.

There are also those people who could have the sun come right through the window and wrap its warmth and light around them, but who still would see only darkness. Such people are, of course, might be those who live with depression, who have little skill with thinking positive, or even who have an aversion to the concept of positive thinking because they've come to misunderstand that "positive thinking" and "thinking all daisies and puppy-dogs" are not the same thing.

The healthy thing is for people to see whatever reality is outside that window, so there's not much point in further discussing either those who refuse to look out at night or those have some
"issue" with being positive in the first place.

So, what about those people who all seem to be in that same position of looking at the world and their own life from behind that window? Which of them have had to make their way past any number of "gray walls" to get to that window? Which of them have had to make their way past layers of those gray walls, and not just one simple one? Which of these people have been able to simply walk over to that window without having to deal with a whole lot of obstacles in the way of the simple act of looking at life and the world? We can't always tell. What may be more important to have a little understanding of, however, may be in understanding that outlooks on life can be colored (or not) not by the simple act of "looking out the window" or deciding what we'll think or do about what we see; but by all those times when a person has had to find his way past his personal "grayness" and to those windows where everyone else is standing.

It seems to me that if/when those "gray walls" start to descend because serious negative events/circumstances take place, the person who has the advantage of having those "cracks" automatically built into those walls will have an easier time finding weakness in those walls, chipping away, breaking past them, and getting to those windows. Referring again to that common and simple example of a parent whose primary concern in life is the wellbeing and happiness of his child, the person who thinks, "Whatever else happens, I can't really let it get to me too much because all I truly care about is my child's good health and happiness," already has it built in that whatever bad things go on (that don't involve his child), those walls just aren't going to be all that thick and impenetrable. The person who doesn't have those "more important" or "more meaningful" things to top their list of potential sources of "upset" (when compared to some of the less important sources of it) has the disadvantage of being without at least a certain amount of "cracks" in that wall.

Something else that can put people at a disadvantage, when it comes to whether or not that wall that can descend is without cracks and/or "built" with limited thickness and durability, can be lack of sufficient coping skills in times of trouble. People with good coping skills may not be able to stop having a "wall descend around them", but they're often able to find ways to put up their own obstacles to the wall. In other words, solid coping skills can provide a person with the tools needed to, at least somewhat, deter the uimpeded descending of a wall. Coping skills may not be (usually aren't) a way to completely stop one of those walls of grayness to descend in times of serious sadness or struggle, They can, however, help keep one of those walls from making it that much more difficult to get past in order to get to the windows and see beyond one's own troubles.

In any case, how difficult it is for someone to get past his own "grayness" and troubles, and get to where he's at a window and able to look for some of the more positive things within view, isn't the real point here. The real point is that even getting to where they can see the brighter outlook of what's beyond one's own, inner, challenges can be different for different people.

Yet More Differences Between Individuals

If you imagine one exterior wall with a row of windows on it, and if you imagine a one person standing at each window and looking out; even though all of those people have somehow found themselves in the same position of looking at life and the world would be bringing different things to their own perspective. Those people who hadn't struggled past their own "gray wall" to get to the window would have fewer things coloring their perspective. If they had a realistic but generally positive attitude, they could see sunlight (but also some negative things under the harsher glare of it). They could also see darkness (but also see some positive things showing up in it). As positive thinkers, they would most likely find a way to focus on the more positive things; but they may also be positive by thinking about what they might be able to do about the negative things. They'd also most likely have their own set of "mental tricks" that might aid in positive thinking. It would all be fairly simple.

What about those people who'd had to break through a gray wall to get to the window, though? On the one hand, the fact that they'd managed to get themselves among all those other "window-lookers" would show that they'd already demonstrated a considerable amount of positive thinking/approach.

Their challenge, however, might be that they would, in fact, see things differently than the others did. That's not saying they wouldn't/couldn't have developed a very positive approach/outlook, but they would have been required to put more processing and "mental tricks" into getting to where they had that positive outlook.

Although there would be a good chance that they had learned skills, and gained a more solid understanding of what positive thinking and approach are; they essentially would have learned the hard way that "The View" could never again be "daisies and puppy-dogs". People cannot unlearned what they've learned, even when they are skilled at putting negative experiences/emotions at the back of their mind.

Before moving away from the window/walls analogy, just a few more comments about the differences in how the different people would view or describe what they saw outside that window:

If someone who hadn't struggled to get to where everyone else was standing and looking at life or the world were asked what he saw, he may say something like, "I see a beautiful, sunny, day out there; and when night falls I'll see a beautiful and starlit sky and shadows that dance in the moonlight." The same person may add, "In the darkness I also see people who are struggling to find their way, and I'm trying to think of things I could do that might help them."

The person who had struggled past his gray wall (of whatever thickness and in any number of layers, depending on how much sadness and how many challenges he'd experienced in life) might say all those same things the first person said. He might, however, add some more to what he had to say.

He might add something like, "The night stars and moonlight are beautiful, but I know what it feels like to struggle, and I can't help but focus on things I might be able to do to help those people who are struggling out there." He might add something like, "I can't tell you how absolutely beautiful I find that bright and sunny day out there, because I've spent so much time trying just to get to this window." Whether he'd need to tell you why it was he'd spent so much time trying to get to the window, or whether you just happened to know what it was to which he was referring, his remarks could create the impression that he "wasn't as positive" as the first person was. He may, in fact, be even more positive than that first person. What went into his positive view may not be positive experiences, and those experiences may have, in fact, become a part of him; but it more be a matter of his combining both the positive thinking and his own changed, "wiser", and "deeper" self than it would be his being "only negative" ("because he 'just had to bring up that negative stuff'").

Something worth mentioning, too, is that those people who haven't had to make their way past a gray wall haven't had their ability to get past it tested. With all the bright and sunny positive thinking they may have, they just don't have as many negative things to overcome, find something positive in, and do something positive about.

The person who has found his way to that window by getting past his own sadnesses and emotions has been tested. The fact that he actually does have a positive outlook and approach can, in ways, almost seem like a "minor miracle". This is the resilience of the human spirit. The thing is, however; that while people are so often very resilient, if they're normal they aren't very often impervious to the deepest sadnesses and emotions that come with some negative experiences. How deeply such a person may feel his own positive outlook or appreciate his own skill in using positive approaches to challenges and thinking may be something the person chooses not to express (in the interest of not bringing up the "deeper" and "less-than-cheerful" aspects to his thinking). On the other hand, if he tries to express the depth and expanse of his own positive outlook (and why he has it), he runs the risk of "being a downer" to the person whose idea of "positive thinking" is "not dwelling on" anything negative. What can seem like "dwelling" to someone who has the luxury of not having been made "wiser" or "deeper" by experiences/emotions isn't always "dwelling" at all. Sometimes (often, in fact), it's just a matter of a person's not being able to separate himself from major, life-changing, thinking-changing, events that are as much who he is as his hair color and eye color.

People who have been through a lot of sadness or overwhelming challenges to the general peace-of-mind and happiness that some people take for granted have often grown so used to the negative stuff that they've come to see it as "as mundane" as, for example, a loaf of white bread or "any Tuesday". Once past negative experiences have been processsed, but because they will always remain a part of who a person is, the person who may appear to be "always bringing up negative things" may really, in fact, simply be bringing up the things that have played a major role in making him the person he is. So, what looks like "talking about negative things" to someone with few negative experiences is often "talking about neutral things" to someone for whom those experiences have been processed but have become a routine part of his own being/life.

He could be "the most positive person in the world"; but while one of those "non-strugglers" in that row of "window-lookers" may have nothing to add to the conversation but positive things; the person who had made his way past negative things may not allow those things to color his view, but often cannot stop those things from coloring his comments to others.

Unless/until a person has been through one experience or another, it's not possible for him to understand a) how "to-the-core" an experience will change someone, and b) that while a person who doesn't deny his own impactful experiences can't "separate himself from who he is", it's entirely possible for people to have those deeper, less "daisies and puppy-dogs parts of themselves" while also being happy and positive-thinking people.

Sometimes, too, the person who knows how positive an outlook and approach he's managed to preserve in the face of a whole lot of challenges to his spirit is kind of proud of his own ability to "stay the same him" as he's always been (only, maybe, a wiser and sadder "him"). More accurately, maybe it's not so much feeling proud that he's kept his spirit and positive outlook and approach alive. Maybe, instead, it's sheer, and profound, happiness and relief that he's managed to "mentally and emotionally survive". It can, in fact, be that happiness that such a person may have a hard time concealing; so while this person may talk about something that's negative, what he may really be doing is sharing something very positive. Only someone who had been through similar challenges to his own happiness would understand that what may, on the surface, appear to be negative is really a matter of very positive thinking. What could be more positive than remaining physically, mentally, and/or emotionally alive in the face of serious events/circumstances that threatened that "aliveness".

One of the most common things we often hear people say about others who show signs of not having completely forgotten about negative experiences of the past is that they "should move on". What such observers may not realize is that, inside, the person actually has moved on. The difference between the "present him" and the "pre-sadness him", however, is often that he has moved on but must move on as the "him" that has been changed. Much of the time, what people interpret as "not moving on" is really their own lack of understanding of what "moving on" looks like when someone has something very big to move on from.

Something else that can happen is that the person who has his own reasons for not wanting to, or not being able to, look out that window into darkness REALLY doesn't want someone else who's used to darkness coming along and opening the blinds. The discomfort that facing some negative things can bring to someone who hasn't come to see them as "neutral" can make the person uncomfortable enough to resent the other's person's "opening the blinds".

Speaking of moving on, I'm going to move on from that windows/walls analogy, and share some personal thoughts:

Sometimes I'll look at my collection of Hubs on this site and think, "Oh brother, what a giant downer a lot of people would think I am if they saw some of these subjects I've written about." The story behind some of the most "depressing" subjects is that the subjects came from questions asked in the HubPages "Answers" sections, and they were questions about serious subjects like getting over losing a loved one or dealing with sadness.

The world is certainly full of people who have some intimate familiarity with subjects like this, but when I've seen such questions asked I've often thought how important it was that whoever tried to offer a helpful answer should be mature and have had some personal experience on the subject. It happens that I've lived long enough to have been through quite a few personal experiences of one kind of another; and it happens that I've had more in number than, perhaps, the average person does.

So, believing that I was "the right person for the job", and very much wanting to try to help someone who was going through something that I understood (at least to some degree), I decided to try to write an answer to some of these questions. I knew I couldn't say anything that would make some people in some situations feel any better, but I thought that I could at least help them know they weren't at all alone in what they were going through; and that someone else had (most likely) thought and felt a lot of the same things that they were thinking and feeling.

The idea that I might be able to help someone else feel a little less alone appealed to me. The idea of "making good use of" some of the rotten experiences I've had in life also appealed to me.

Some of the subjects I've written about aren't quite as depressing as others. Many are serious or sobering, but not out-and-out depressing. In any case, I've always been a little self-conscious about the percentage of depressing and/or sobering Hubs I have; so I've tried to balance out the mix by adding some neutral or frivolous material as well. Also, to be honest, after writing about some very "heavy" subjects, I've most often taken a break by writing a "lighter-weight" piece.

In any case, when I look at the different mix of Hubs I have, I either wonder if it looks like I"m that "big downer" I mentioned earlier; or if, instead, it may look like I have "multiple personality disorder" (or something). The point is, on a site with lots of lighter fare being offered by so many other writers, I've been self-conscious about how I may appear to anyone who pays attention to what I've written. More importantly, I've found myself wishing that I could find some way to show the lighter, happier, side of me.

Comments people have occasionally made on one serious Hub or another have made me see that some readers don't realize that the only reason I can write about some of those subjects is that I am, in fact, well over whatever experience I had was. The emotions I may have had at the time of going through something have long ago been processed and "neatly tucked away in mental files", which I can now use by looking at the contents with the benefit of time and being able to write about them without emotion.

Those serious Hubs may come from some major, negative, experiences in my past; but even as major of some of those experiences have been, they remain but a small part of who/what I am; or how I view or approach life or the world. I know how even talking or writing about negative things can appear to some people (who aren't so comfortable with, or used to such subjects) to be "not being positive". When I stand at that window and look out at life and the world, though, not only am I fortunate enough to still be able to see all the positive that there is out there, but in my offline life, I'm standing strong enough to still be able to support other people if/when they need support.

Even today, in order for me to get to that window I need to step over some of the broken pieces of that gray wall that I'm still not finished knocking down; and it's not always possible for me to hide some of the bruises and scars I've gotten in the process of trying.

One reason I'm bringing up some things up here is that in offline life I've discovered that if I'm dealing with a "sunshine, daisies, puppy-dogs" kind of person (or at least someone in the mood to think that way at the time) there's a good chance that person will see me as "more negative" than he prefers. At the same time, if I'm dealing with a negative person (or someone who believes that being realistic amounts to not acknowledging what's positive), that person is often likely to believe that I "don't get how dire things are" because I'm fairly cheerful, generally positive, and so frequently trying to make sure I'm not someone who "sucks the life out of others" by being "down". So, no matter how positive a person I am, I so often find that I've either got someone else resenting me for not doing a better job of hiding some of those minor scars or bruises; or else I've got someone working hard to "sober me up" because I "don't get" how dire things are.
Equally irksome, there are those who believe that the person who is positive is "just too stupid to see reality".

The reality, in my own case, is that I'm about as positive-thinking a person as anyone could be (but, no, I'm not someone who only sees and talks about daisies and sunshine). The reality is that I do sometimes, maybe, over-compensate for any "gray wall" I still have by often finding ways to try to "bring cheerfulness" to something or someone. Another reality is, though, that I spend an awful lot of time each week laughing so hard I start to hyperventilate. The reality is that there's probably not a minute of any day that goes by when I don't have "running in the back of my mind" how much appreciate all the precious and meaningful, positive, things I've always had in my life. Another reality is, however, that I've had some "doozies" of negative experiences in my life, and I've had more of them than a lot of people have. I don't want "points" or sympathy for them, but they've made up a big enough part of my life that I don't want to, and can't, black out close to 40 years of adult life (and another 20 in my earlier years) just so I won't make someone who doesn't like to hear even hints of "negativity" being introduced into their "sunshine, daisies, and puppy-dogs" thinking.

I've thought more than once about whether or not to go ahead and make the following statement because it will probably come across as egotistical, but here goes: Yet another reality is that I don't worry much about trying to hide any relatively minor scars or bruises I've gotten as a result of trying to get myself to where I'm looking at life and the world "like a normal person" again; because even if any of those scars or bruises are too much of a reminder to some people who don't like to see them, I'm pretty damned pleased that they're the only damage done. Someone else might have allowed some of those negative things to destroy them. In a way, I see those minor scars that sometimes show as a positive thing, which is that I've made my way through a whole lot of bad stuff with almost no damage at all. It is, I guess, my own positive thinking that makes me have a "glass-half-full" view of that absence of more serious damage.

I've asked myself the following question:

Have I allowed some of that bad stuff that has happened in my life define me to the point where I've built my identity on it? There's no doubt that stuff has changed me, but I have no doubt that the well established identity I had before any of that stuff happened remains intact.

When a person has the occasional "big, awful, thing" go on in life, even if it takes years to get over it; there's generally a gradual moving on that takes place; and any "gray wall" that descended sometimes lifts on its own in time. When a person has too many of those big, awful, things happen too close together, and when decades go by without there being much break between big, awful, things; the person may move on past the most recent event/situation. What he can't move on from, however, is the unrelenting descending of one "gray wall" or another with each event/circumstance. So while there's moving on from the event/circumstance, there isn't moving out beyond the latest gray wall without almost non-stop "chipping away" at it just to get to the "window" daily, rather than allow oneself to remain behind the latest gray wall and not be able to see beyond it. So, while it may not become one's identity, it can seem to become a full-time job. When a person spends so many of his waking hours on such a "full-time job" it's pretty difficult not to incorporate some of what he's working on in his communications with others.

Sometimes a person's not being able to hide his efforts may make him appear less than positive, but what observers often don't see is how much a person has managed to conceal, and how many positive steps and techniques he uses to keep what "negativity" he "inflicts" on others to the bare minimum that he does.

Yet another reality is that being positive isn't necessarily about not talking about, referring to, or thinking about negative things (especially if the thinking includes constructive thinking, such as what one might have learned, what he might be able to share with others, or how he (or anyone else) might prevent some negative things from happening again, or to someone else).

Being positive is sometimes about how we handle the negative things in life - not in refusing to talk or write about them, acknowledge them, or allow them to take their place among the rest of the memories and experiences that don't necessarily define us but that shouldn't be denied either.

I don't want to create the impression that I spend all my time thinking about all the negative things in my life, because I don't. When references to them come up is when I'm having a serious discussion with someone, or when I'm writing and trying to come up with something that may help someone else.

The thing is, however, that when I'm standing at that imaginary wall of windows with everyone else, and looking out the one that's mine; while I may be seeing or feeling something very positive, but what I'm seeing or feeling has also been colored, to some extent, by the experiences of my life. The positive and wonderful experiences of our lives color what we see as well, but nobody seems to mind much if we talk about the positive stuff. It's that negative stuff so many people don't want to know about, hear about, or see.

There's so much more to being positive than not talking about anything negative. It's unfortunate that so few people seem to understand that.

For now, I'll return myself to regular, positive, programming; already in progress. I've heard it will be sixty degrees with bright sunshine tomorrow.

I'll meet you and the rest of the world at the windows. Just don't expect me to talk about nothing but daisies and puppy-dogs.