The Bright Side!

When my son Josh was a young boy, he would try and stare at the sun. Then he'd complain about how his eyes hurt. We would stay, "Stop looking at it, you're going to go blind." His response, "I can't help it!!!"

Well, he didn't go blind. He also stopped trying to stare at the sun.

Thinking back to that story made me think of "looking at the bright side.”

Things happen every single day. Not necessarily big, horrible, things, but just things that are annoying. We put energy into them by complaining about them. It could be the heat, the cold, the hangnail, or the dog hair on the floor, whatever. It’s always something.

What if we tried to look at the bright side of whatever happens? What kind of an impact would that have on us and those around us?

A while back, I went to get gas at my local gas station. I might as well have been waiting for a ride at Disneyland. I decided I couldn’t handle the line, left it, and drove around the parking lot when I realized the yellow light warning me I was about to run out of gas, wasn’t going to disappear until I got some. I got back in the line—now even further back. I decided to relax about it. What was the big deal? As it turned out, when I finished pumping the gas, a homeless man appeared out of nowhere, searching through the trashcan. He looked at me, asked me for .50 cents. He thanked me profusely when I gave him a dollar. He was grateful! For a $1.00!!!

It was at that point I realized that waiting in the long line had a bright side. I was able to help someone, just a little bit, which not only helped the man, but also made me feel good.

We can look at the bad things—that’s the tendency—or we can look at the bright side. And there is a bright side, if only we would examine events more closely.

You don’t have to look at the sun and risk going blind to look at the bright side, all you have to do is look at events from another perspective.

Looking at the bright side makes for a much more enjoyable journey through life. We can do it, all we have to do is choose to!