I Was Thinking... It Could Be Worse

A wise man once said, “It isn’t what happens that’s important, it is how you handle it.” Obviously, I wasn’t that wise man. Like many other people, I tend to overreact to situations that don’t call for such a reaction.
I’ve never gotten so lost that I couldn’t find my way, but during the process, my level of anxiety did spike. A friend of mine said he never gets lost; he just finds new ways of getting somewhere. To him it is more of an adventure than a trauma. How we react to life’s stumbling blocks can not only affect us, but also those around us.
For those of you old enough to remember the Li’l Abner comic strip, there was one character that always seemed to have bad luck. His name was Joe Btfsplk and everywhere he went a dark cloud was always over his head.
We probably all know someone like that, where everything always seems bad. If it is a sunny day, they complain that we need rain, and the sun is sucking the little moisture we have right out of the ground. If we do get rain, he will tell you how depressing a cold rainy day is and it will just cause erosion and it is probably too late to do any good.
These people love the Minnesota Vikings because they know that no matter how good they do, in the end you can count on them to disappoint you. It is amazing yet sad that so many people let the success or failure of a professional sports team affect their outlook on life.
There seems to be something about negativism that is contagious. A bowler may roll a great game but agonizes over the easy spare he missed. A baseball player may go 3 for 4 at the plate but thinks the most about the one time he struck out. A salesman may convince most of his customers to buy his product but focuses on the one customer he couldn’t get.
Too many of us allow the few negatives to overshadow the positives in life. But not everyone falls for that trap.
Some people endure the bumps of life with a more resilient philosophy. A friend of ours discussed their father’s reaction to a less than favorable medical diagnosis when he said, “Thankfully it’s only that.” While he wasn’t pleased to hear the results of the tests, he took it in stride rather than lamenting “his” bad luck.
His daughter related that this was a common attitude for her dad. When other obstacles of life arose, he often responded with, “Well, it could be worse.” Somehow, he didn’t take the set back as a defeat, but only a part of the ups and downs of life. He wasn’t going to dwell on the negatives when life still had good things to offer.
Old TV shows like Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, or Andy Griffith’s Mayberry portrayed perfect lives, but reality is rarely like this. Everyone I know have suffered setbacks and losses. But how we react determines the course of our lives.
My grandmother was the fifth of nine children. She lived through WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII. Her formal education ended at second grade, yet she organized and operated several of her own businesses. She outlived all of her siblings and her husband. She lost two of her five children before they were 12 and buried two of her adult children as well.
Yet she was the most positive person I’ve known. Her advice to those around her that suffered misfortune was, “When you start feeling sorry for yourself, get busy, do something.”
I wonder what grandma would say to those of us that get bent out of shape when we lose our cell service, have our battery go dead, or have the internet crash for several hours? I’m sure she would think, “It could be worse.”
Did You Ever Wonder? — If you’re trying to fail and you succeed, did you fail or succeed?