I once read about a man who, back in the mid-1970s, was driving in a downpour and stopped for fuel. This was in the days of “full-service” gas stations. He sat inside his dry car while an attendant, who whistled cheerfully while he worked, filled up his tank in that awful rain.
As the customer was leaving, he said apologetically, “I’m sorry to get you out in this weather.”
The attendant replied, “It doesn’t bother me a bit. When I was fighting in Vietnam, I made up my mind in a foxhole one day that if I ever got out of this place alive, I would be so grateful I’d never complain about anything again. And I haven’t.”
One person likes to say, “Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.” And Ralph Waldo Emerson puts it this way: “An individual has a healthy personality to the exact degree to which they have the propensity to look for the good in every situation."
However you say it, choosing our attitudes is part of building a whole and happy life.
-- Steve Goodier
Image: flickr.com/Kevin Spencer