I live in a rural area, in a valley surrounded by high wooded hills. No cable. No satellite. No TV. Painfully limited radio and cell reception. Without the Internet, my access to the wider world essentially vanishes.
So when my Internet crashed, I was hurled into a suddenly shrunken world and an entire change of routine.
What a gift!
I didn’t have to see it as a gift. But I internalized the “make lemonade from lemons” outlook long ago. When I broke my right arm a few years ago, for instance, I sat in the ER thinking about how this would give me a chance to develop new skills with my left one. And it did, too!
So when my Internet failed, I decided right away that I would treat the episode as a vacation, an opportunity to view life from a new and different perspective while I waited for the revival of my connection.
It was great, and the timing was perfect.
It didn’t have to be that way. None of us likes to have our life’s plans and patterns unexpectedly interrupted in a major way. I could have gone Full Grump, big time.
I’m not bragging about my cultivated optimism. I just want to share that it’s possible to look for the good in anything that happens to you.
Sometimes that’s not an easy challenge. Life can deal some heavy blows. It can throw seemingly insurmountable obstacles in our paths. It comes with storms and thorns, with pain and loss. For all of us. No growth comes without resistance. Struggle is part of the package.
I got to do some extra reading while I was offline, and for the first time in a long time, I encountered a new answer to the question, “Why are we here?” Want to know what it was? “To learn what to do and what not to do.” That’s amazingly deeper and more profound than it may seem at first glance. Play with it a little this week and see how it clarifies things for you.
One of the things I’m grateful for learning to do is to look for the good in every situation. It allows me to live with much greater ease, and I’m discovering that living with ease is a skill that all of us can aspire to developing. Optimism helps.
And even though in some cases it takes a while to see it, goodness is always present. But you have to look for it, and expect it, and to be willing to recognize and claim it when it appears.
I’ll leave you with that for this week – with the hope that you’ll look for the good in your life, and increase in your ability to know what to do and what not to do, all with great ease and joy.
Warmly,
Susan
Image by Briam Cute from Pixabay