The Silver Lining

So every Monday my coworkers and I have Silver Lining Lunch, where we list off the things that are either good about being staffed in Buffalo, NY for the winter, or we try to think of places that would be worse. Our funny little ritual emphasizes the importance of finding the positive in our lives.

I grew up thinking that life was generally good and bad things only happened every once in a while. However over the past year, I have done a 180 on this topic and now am pretty certain that there is infinite capacity for sad or bad in our lives and much more limitted capacity for good things. Therefore it is crucial that we celebrate the good. We have to accept that the bad is going to be there, always in the background, and that there will always be the potential for more bad, but we choose to focus on the good.

There are many examples of people who went through terrible things, like cancer or loosing a spouse, things that you would think covered them for life. But then something else terrible happens to these same people. Stories like these remind me of two things

1. the enduring human spirit - the sheer strength that humans have to overcome tragedy
2. life's infinite capacity for bad and the absolute choice we must make to celebrate good

Celebrating good is a choice. One that we must continually remind ourselves of. Because for whatever reason we focus on the bad when that is exactly the opposite of what we need to be doing. We must look for the silver lining.