One of my favorite quotes is by Winston Churchill: “I choose to be an optimist. It does not seem to be much use to be anything else.”
I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly. I believe all of us have something to feel good about, to be thankful for, to look forward to or be hopeful about, and that choosing to focus on those good things – in other words, maintaining a positive attitude – will make you feel a lot happier than the alternative.
Experience has also taught me that being optimistic is sometimes easier said than done. When you’re struggling through one of the ‘downs’ on life’s up-and-down roller-coaster, it can be hard to keep a rosy outlook. Staying upbeat in the face of illness, debt, grief, anxiety, loneliness and other hardship or tragedy is a difficult thing to do.
Even in those times, though – in fact, especially in those times – I find Churchill’s quote useful. As we’re struggling, it’s important to remember that this, too, shall pass. And you never know what great things may be waiting just around the corner. You have to stay open to the possibility of those things happening, even at your worst moments, so that you’re ready to accept them into your life when they do.
I was thinking about this around the start of the new year, as I looked back on 2014 with an overwhelming feeling of good fortune and gratitude, recalling how different things were for me just a few short years ago.
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In the years leading up to my move to Perham, things weren’t going so well for me. I was working two jobs, sometimes three, and could still barely make ends meet. I was sharing a modest (to put it mildly) 700-square-foot house with random roommates, scraping by with the help of friends. I feared I’d never escape my gargantuan pile of student loan debt, never find a decent paying job in my field. Never be able to escape my tiresome ‘journalist by day, barista by night’ routine of 60-hour workweeks. Never find the right person to share my life with.
Those were, in short, the roughest years of my life. I got divorced and went through a string of go-nowhere relationships. I almost lost my home to foreclosure. I was drowning in debt. I was exhausted.
But even then I had things to be thankful for, and I was. Good friends, jobs that I enjoyed (even if they weren’t enough to pay the bills), a supportive family, my health. It was those things that kept my spirits up. I didn’t allow myself to think of my situation at the time as permanent. It was just for a while; things would get better.
And, fortunately for me, they did.
Today, things are as different as they could be. I’m married to my favorite human on the planet, we live in a nice home that we love, and we have our first baby on the way. Our jobs are going well, the bills are getting paid, we and our families are healthy, and our dog always greets us at the door with wags and wiggles. What more could I ask for? It’s remarkable how much things have changed.
As I venture into 2015, my plan is to move forward with excitement and hope for things to come. I realize I’m enjoying one of the ‘ups’ on my life’s roller-coaster, and that not all years will be as grand as 2014 was, but I have no desire to be anything but optimistic about the future. If I were to make a resolution this year, it would be just that – to remain optimistic. After all, “it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.”
