Quotation Saturday

Pss. 16:9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope.

OPTIMIST

“People who are too optimistic seem annoying. This is an unfortunate misinterpretation of what an optimist really is.
An optimist is neither naive, nor blind to the facts, nor in denial of grim reality. An optimist believes in the optimal usage of all options available, no matter how limited. As such, an optimist always sees the big picture. How else to keep track of all that’s out there? An optimist is simply a proactive realist.
An idealist focuses only on the best aspects of all things (sometimes in detriment to reality); an optimist strives to find an effective solution. A pessimist sees limited or no choices in dark times; an optimist makes choices.
When bobbing for apples, an idealist endlessly reaches for the best apple, a pessimist settles for the first one within reach, while an optimist drains the barrel, fishes out all the apples and makes pie.
Annoying? Yes. But, oh-so tasty!”
~ Vera Nazarian

“If an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say in a pleasant and hopeful voice, "Well this isn't too bad, I don't have a left arm anymore but at least nobody will ever ask me if I'm left-handed or right-handed," but most of us would say something more along the lines of, "Aaaaaa! My arm! My arm!”
~ Lemony Snicket

“You can add up your blessings or add up your troubles. Either way, you'll find you have an abundance.”
~ Richelle E. Goodrich

“The pessimist waits for better times, and expects to keep on waiting; the optimist goes to work with the best that is at hand now, and proceeds to create better times.”
~ Christian D. Larson

PESSIMIST

“Believe. No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted island, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.”
~ Helen Keller

“Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.”
~ Woody Allen

“Doubt is a form of pessimism that acts as an agent, which is sent to hinder prosperity on its materilization journey.”
~ Michael Bassey Johnson

“The pessimist reason that things just happen, where the optimist believe that things happen for a reason.”
~ Anthony Liccione

REALIST

“The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the miraculous also.”
~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“It is better to recognise that we are in darkness than to pretend that we can see the light.”
~ Hedley Bull

“She [Samantha Lyle] was a realist, someone who knew choices were meant to be made, and that one must suffer the consequences of those choices, no matter what they were.”
~ Ayr Bray

“Maybe it's not logical. I don't know. I don't care. I've been asked didnt I think it odd that I should be present to witness the death of everything and I do think it's odd but that doesnt mean it's not so. Someone has to be here.”
~ Cormac McCarthy

HOPE

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”
~ Emily Dickinson

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
~ Paulo Coelho

“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
" Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.”
~ Alexandre Dumas

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Good Things Happen

Gal. 5: 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

We spoke of bad things happening this week. While we know bad things happen, we also know good things happen. It seems to me, being an optimist and all, good things happen for me all the time.

I listen to people complain about things over and over again. The same things they complained about last year are still the same things they complain about this year and will complain about next year too. They never try to change.

People flee from the optimist because they’re always applauding the good things happening; people flee from the pessimist because they keep harping on the bad things that are happening. But people flock to the realist because, let’s face it, they embrace the good and bad things and just go through life accepting the fact that good and bad things happen, deal with it.

Let’s pick these three apart:

There is the optimist, who when something bad has happened, chooses to see it as a bad thing but something good is about to happen, or something better is yet to come. It’s not bragging when something good has happened, it’s sharing. I like to share with people (who may be going through the same thing) that while I was on a darkened path, something in the form of a ray of light came through and Lightened the way. And more often than not, it happened by way of Divine Intervention. That’s just the way * I * see it, the optimist.

Then there is the pessimist. While he or she is on the darkened path, they feel the need to share that pain and anguish. It is as if they are wallowing in the pool and waiting for someone else to throw them an anchor to hold onto, preferably from another pessimist.

They scream and wail for help and the bystander pessimist announces to the sufferer, “Here’s the anchor, just claw your way to shore and I’ll give it to you.”

Or they’ll scoff and say, “Well I told you so. You got yourself in that mess, you can get yourself out of it!

The pessimist takes a negative and amplifies the situation with more negativity. That’s just the way the pessimists work.  Negative people feed off one another. Not much good can come from two negative people! Put an optimist in the path of the pessimist and guess what, we toss that anchor of hope out and reel in the pessimist.

Then there is the realist who says ‘Deal with it.’ Yup, they’ve been dealt a raw deal and they just shrug and deal with it. They don’t seek promise, hope and faith. They just deal. They don’t trash the situation, they just deal. They see things as they ARE not the possibilities of what could BE.

I guess that’s an okay kind of merry-go-round sort of life but in reality it is no life. They just circle the days and deal with whatever comes; they don’t strive to become anything more than what they are dealt, they just deal. TO ME, a realist has covered his tracks in rose petals and lies to himself that a swift wind won’t blow them away. And remember, a liar always believes what he sells himself; and usually more times than not, the lie catches up, a gust of wind blows all the rose petals away and they are made to see what reality they have created for themselves.

I’m not ragging on the pessimist and realist of society, I’m just enlightening the fact that they’re out there. Society is made up of billions of them actually and basically that is why the world is in such disarray. We optimists can’t carry the world, you know, but we do keep it spinning. Why? Because we see HOPE in tomorrow, no matter how  bad it is today.

What I’m trying to say is this: pessimists survive, realist live, while optimist have hope. I have friends in each of these categories and I don’t judge their choices. I try and give them hope in turning that negative into a positive, even when they SWEAR there is not a problem, I extend HOPE! Call it the optimist in me trying to see the good in everything.

Good things happen to me because you can throw all the negative crud you want at me, and somehow, some way, I’ll make it positive and good will flow like living water from me! It’s all any of us can do to make it in the world today.

Maybe try looking up > optimist, instead of down > the pessimist, or side to side > the realist. Walk with a clear conscience and embrace the good about to happen, the hope that the best is yet to come.

Amen! 

Bad Things Happen

Acts 11: 23 “Who, when he came, and had seen the grace of God, was glad, and exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord.”

Bad Things Happen

Bad things happen to good people, that much we know. What we do and how we react to these bad things makes all the difference in the world. I am a known optimist. When something bad happens in my life I know right around the corner is something better just waiting for me. I see good in everything.

Since I was a child I always saw the Light at the end of the tunnel. I always have seen a path, right or wrong in situations. While at the time of something bad happening it is so hard to even see a sliver of light penetrating the darkness, I held onto hope and faith to get me through.

I seriously think this is a problem for many people. They have sunken so deep into negativity, they have trouble grasping the light that is being handed to them, thus staying in the dark and not really ever embracing the light. No change can happen if you always see the negative (or not so  positive) in everything.

A perfect example is the night sky. While many people walk out the door and see darkness shielding them, I choose to walk out the door and see the stars piercing through the darkness. When it is cloudy and shielding me from seeing the stars, I hold onto hope that the clouds will soon disappear. I have faith that the sun is still out there shining and will  break through the clouds.

The realist will say that the sun being there is just a scientific fact. The pessimist will say the obscurity can go on for days, the optimist will see the Light no matter how far off the sun may be. I know it is there; I have faith that it will shine on me and carry me away from any negative thoughts or feelings.

A realist defined is a person who tends to view or represent things as they really are. To them, the stars are just forms of gases fixed in a space. The Word of God is just words until he/she can have proof otherwise. Even after they are proven, they need more proof. Think Thomas, the ‘I need to see the nail holes and put my hands on them’ Thomas; a witness but never the less, needing even MORE proof.

So where does faith fit into the equation? I hear people say they HAVE faith but I also hear others say they’ve LOST faith, to me forming a spectrum of negativity that has no place for the word faith.

Faith is the unknown. Faith is the unseen. Faith is trust in all that propels us forward. Realism is accepting that you have to be REAL before you can have faith and pessimism is not accepting anything on the grain of sand faith stands.

I can bet Thomas was a realist and I can bet Judas was a pessimist. Take these two characters out of the book and you have men, men who never embraced the Light which was being given to them freely.

Choices. We all make choices in right or wrong and with that there are consequences. Don’t blame God if you make the wrong choices. Don’t blame God if all the good you do isn’t being rewarded with good things. Bad things happen to good people but it is the CHOICE to see the good in situations that we optimists are rewarded with good things. I speak from the positively good things and bad that have happened throughout my life from experience.

Bad things happen to good people. Not because God is punishing you. Not because God deems you unworthy. Bad things happen because of the CHOICES you make.