Optimists and Pessimists...

I was recently going through some of my old PowerPoint presentations and came across a great story I'd like to share. It's a little fable imparted to me by one of my classmates in the Argosy University Doctorate of Education program...I think it's entitled the Horse or something; either way, it is a great illustration of the difference between optomists and pessimists...

There once was a father who had twin sons. One son was an optimist, the other a pessimist. On the twins’ birthday, while the boys were at school, the father loaded the pessimist’s room with every imaginable toy and game. The optimist’s room he loaded with horse manure.

That night the father passed by the pessimist’s room and found him sitting amid his new gifts crying bitterly. “Why are you crying?” the father asked. “Because my friends will be jealous, and I’ll have to read the instructions, and I’ll constantly need batteries and my toys will get broken," answered the pessimist.

Passing the optimist’s room, the father found him dancing for joy in the pile of manure. “What are you so happy about?” asked the father. To which the optimist replied, “There’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”

I think this speaks to the fact that life is what you make of it. If you look for the good, guess what you find: good things.

If you choose to look for the bad, guess what you find: the bad.

Sometimes, however, you have to look reeeeeaaaallly hard to see those good things. Even through all of the "stuff" life has to throw at you.