My Glass is Half Full

MONDAY, May 20, 2024: Today, at 8:01 am, my phone rang. The woman on the other end of the phone was from the civil division of the Mohave County Sheriff's Department responding to a message that I left yesterday. The specifics of the call aren't what filled my day with joy, it was receiving the call at 8:01 that pleasantly reaffirmed my positive outlook on life. [My friend assumed it would take all day to get a callback and that started a wonderful conversation about glasses half full or empty.]

My truest nature is that I am always looking for the positive in every situation. I don't know why or how it started, I just know that my positive optimism is often a challenge in a jaded world that expects the worst-case scenario right out of the gate.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately because of a recent conversation with a loved one whose perspective on an experience was to immediately feel that he had failed when everyone else saw him as the "badass with the Tesla" who was a real-life hero. How can this stark gap between realities coexist?

But, here's the thing. We are born with positive optimism. We reach out and milk is there, and when it's not, we cry because the milk is supposed to be there. We fall down a million times before we walk or run, but we always get up! We love purely and full of innocence. This is how we all, every single creature, come into this world. We LEARN jaded negativism, either from how we learn to interpret life events or because we internalize the jaded negativism of those around us...or, perhaps both.

I have my jaded moments, too. But my natural inclination is to trust that when I leave a message about an urgent situation over the weekend, the person will call as soon as they receive that message. In this case, the office opened at 8:00 am, and I received the call at 8:01, which gave my friend and I a day of laughter about how my "glass half full" challenged her "glass half empty" in a fun and beautiful way.

I love my positive optimism, but not everyone else does. My sister-in-law calls me the "Shirley Feeny" to her "Laverne DiFazio" because Shirley was the positive optimist of the duo and my sister-in-law tends to prepare for the worst-case scenarios. We laugh about how differently we approach the same life experiences, and we work through the personal aggravations that frequently arise when the other's inclination rubs us the wrong way. I get it...my positive optimism can be a real pain in the ass...lol.

And I make no claim that either position is inherently right or wrong, or that one is better than the other. A case could be made for both perspectives as to why each is the better option. For me, I just feel better expecting that everything is going to work out fine, even with the pain of disappointment when it doesn't, because I will still look for the positive in the disappointment...lol...because that's how positive optimism works!

So today I celebrate the 8:01 moments of life...because life is truly fragile and unpredictable so I choose the joy of positive optimism...