Hopelessly Optimistic

Have you ever noticed that every theme song from a 1980's TV show is hopelessly optimistic? Here are a few:

"As long as we've got each other we've got the world spinning right in our hands"
"Every time I turn around I see the girl that turns my world around"
"Theme music playing from Hill Street Blues...it's instrumental but it still ends in a Major key!"

What a happy decade. I'm thrilled to have grown up in it.

Sometimes I feel like everyone I know has a fantastic life. Even people on radio shows that I don't know have fantastic lives. I start thinking "What do you do to get that?" and begin the Comparison/Criticism cycle. After a few futile minutes I realize that I am blessed too, as much or more than most people I know, and definitely more than most people I don't (like, 96% of the world). It all depends on focus. I could complain that I have a backside on which you could easily project movies; that my husband just spent two weekends on a roof and is ready to jump right in to Weekend Three: Well-Digging; that my kids are so energetic they run circles around me; that my calling necessitates driving all over the stake with a wee baby; or that we had to pay a back tax bill and thus deplete our emergency fund.

OR, I could be grateful that: I'm not suffering for want of food; I have a spouse who is so hard-working and unselfish with is time (and back); that my kids are so energetic, imaginative, healthy, and happy; that I have a calling where I can see long-lost friends in the stake; and that we had plenty in our emergency fund to pay said back tax bill.

Beyond that, I have friends and family and the gospel. Shoot, what more do you want?

"You want to be where you can see your troubles are all the same - You wanna go where everybody knows your name."