We Chose Our Perspective

So...

Do the bad memories crowd out the good ones?  If so, I'm truly sorry.  But I must ask a question that most of us do not wish to confront.  Why?  I'm afraid the answer may force us to shift the blame from external sources to a locale a bit closer to home.

Is a negative outlook a choice we make on our own or is it induced from some external source?  Maybe it's genetic or maybe it's a disorder.  It could be environmental, social, or something greater.  You know, we are all subject to forces greater than ourselves at some point in our lives, especially when we deny it... but I digress.

Even if it's not a choice, we still have have free will.  So what is the implication?  Even if life dishes out difficulties and metes out misery, we still have the choice of how we will process and react.  Life is not about what happens to us - it's really about how we handle the hand we are dealt.

So I ask again; do the bad memories crowd out the good ones?  For some people they do and it's not a choice.  However, barring some mental incapacity to be happy, it shouldn't be reality.  Yet we often see miserable people go through their miserable lives all the time and in a state of malaise.  These people aren't uncommon and they are certainly not alone.  I certainly don't begrudge these people their cynicism, their sour attitudes or the malaise.  I'm guilty of that myself.

Being borderline numbered among the emotionally down-trodden, I have a certain insight that may just be relevant.  However, each person on this planet is in the same boat, regardless of our physical circumstances.  That really is the human condition.  IT'S TOUGH.  It's difficult to overcome the bad memories, the long days, the worry, the stress and the injustices.  Of all people, I understand how this feels... I'm human.  But if there is one thing that I know with great clarity, it is that great people of inspiration and unending hope feel these same things.  We chose how we react to life and the memories it provides.  It is a matter of choice as to how we cultivate the fields of history in our minds.  Do we decide to water and grow the distasteful or do we select to pull the weeds and carefully foster the good, seek out the benefits, embrace the challenges, and applaud how life has made us stronger?

It's a matter of perspective.  Perspective is how we look at the world.  Admittedly, some of us could be looking up at it from a wheel chair or a hospital bed, but we still have the choice to select our lenses.  One of the most cheerful people I know looks at life through the lenses of a polio-ridden body.  For some of us it is only with great difficulty and resolve of will to select the rose-colored glasses over the whiskey sour.  In fact, I dare say it is with great difficulty that MOST of us look at the brighter side of life and not dwell on the negatives.  Nevertheless, it is still a choice.

So do the bad memories crowd out the good?  It was your decision all along.