The Colonel said, “If you can’t see the bright side of a situation, don’t give up, kiddo. Start polishing the dull side.”
There is a beautiful quote from A.A. Milne’s book Winnie the Pooh. It is often used or misused on the Internet in memes, but the original goes like this:
“What day is it?” asked Pooh.
“It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
“My favorite day,” said Pooh.
To me, this is a perfect encapsulation of The Colonel’s perspective. Dad was consistently taking something that was broken and fixing it or adapting it into something new. He would see possibilities in what others saw as junk. He kept that same mentality in looking at situations – and at people. He didn’t “make the best of a seemingly bad situation,” rather, he just stubbornly and persistently polished the situation until we could see the good in it.
I encourage you to look at every negative situation and ask yourself (genuinely, not sarcastically), “What’s good about this?” What are the positives in this situation? What lessons can I learn from this moment? How can I use this particular situation to benefit myself and others? If this was the best of all possible scenarios, what would it look like? How can I move it closer to that image? What is one thing I can do right now to make this situation better?
In the cynical world of the 21st century, it’s so easy to fall into an Eeyore trap. I do so more often than I care to admit. Like the donkey character from A.A. Milne’s book, the Eeyore trap causes people to see only the cloud within the silver lining. When that happens, I have to remind myself of Dad and Piglet and Pooh. Try to polish the edge of that gray cloud and see what the lining looks like.
On any given day, if I can manifest a combination of Piglet’s consistent optimism and Pooh’s quiet contentment, I think that will make it my favorite day.
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