Personal perspectives

I am glad I am not exactly the same person I used to be.

Earlier today I caught myself thinking about how I don't like this time of  year and how negative things always seem to happen during the winter months. There was a time when I would have lingered on those thoughts and would have been depressed for a few days.

But somewhere along the way I have learned to see things from  different perspective. For one thing, I am trying to teach myself not to think of things in negative terms. That is not an easy thing for me, but when I do catch myself thinking of things in a negative way I make myself look at it differently.

There are three things that have happened to me that I thought of as negative.

In January of 1986 I was in a car accident in which my car was totally wrecked. With the perspective of time I can see that if I had not wrecked my car I probably would not have taken the chance to move to Florida when it came. And moving to Florida is one of the best things to happen to me.

In January 1990, I was pretty close to homeless because my roommate moved out of the trailer we were sharing and turned off the electricity because it was in his name. But that allowed me to meet someone who helped put me in a better place and a more stable environment.

And in March 2008 a semi truck crashed into and almost went totally through my apartment. Luckily I sleep in late and was not in the living room when it happened. This resulted in my apartment being remodeled and is now the nicest apartment I have ever lived in. And somehow through that I have become a much cleaner person.

But I think that I and the rest of this country would be much better off if we stopped thinking and talking of things in a negative ways.

For instance, I spent a little time reading peoples responses to Keith Olbermann's leaving MSNBC. And in the vast majority of the responses that I read had some version of Olbermann, Rachael Maddow and liberals are all liars; or Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and conservatives are all liars. There was no in between. And in a lot of the responses people were wishing very bad things would happen to these people. And that is sad.

Now I have made it known I m not a fan of Olbermann but I have't called him a liar and I don't wish bad things on him. In fact I hope  he gets an on air job again, I just wish he would air his views in a more responsible way.

I think part the problem is that people have a habit of  looking at opposing viewpoints as good or bad or just out and out lies. When the reality is that a different opinion is just that-- a different opinion.

I think we would be better off realizing that a situation or an opinion is just is what it is.