“You’ve got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. Latch on to the affirmative, and don’t mess with Mr. In-Between.” — Johnny Mercer
We hear it all the time: Don’t focus on what’s wrong. Find what works and what is right, and focus on that. Reframe your outlook, choose to be positive, and look at the good parts of a situation—that’s the spirit!
Oh, please.
The “always look on the bright side” attitude is not who I am. In fact, it’s often a struggle for me to resist nitpicking, even when something hasn’t gone awry. However, when it does? Remember Murphy’s Law—anything that can go wrong will go wrong? Kelley’s Law is similar: “If it’s going to go wrong, it will be when Brenda is around, and we’ll all hear about it for days.”
Lately, though, as I hurtle toward turning 60, I’m realizing life is too short to be cranky all the time. It’s really doing my head in, so now the plan is to look at every situation and find something positive about it—or, if not positive, at least not quite so bad. This week proved to be challenging in that aspect.
It started with a heavier-than-normal workload, but hey, I’m a writer who’s employed. That’s a positive right there, so I will not complain about all the work. Others would probably love to be in my situation. So, it’s not going to be, “I have to work.” It’s going to be, “Look what I get to do!” OK, maybe not quite that rah-rah, but still, I’m grateful for the work I have.
Then, while driving around running errands, another driver bashed right into me. It was so random—one minute, I’m inching along in traffic; the next, my door is caved in, and another car is crunched against mine. The police had to come, and everyone stuck behind us was less than pleased, as I could tell by the gestures they made as they drove past.
So now there’s an insurance process to handle, and some repairs, which means at some point I’ll have to do without a car for a few days. Nothing makes me crankier than not having a car at the ready. Still, there are a few positives in this situation. No one was hurt—that’s always the best outcome in any accident. My car is drivable. It looks awful, but it runs. There are pictures that clearly show what happened, so that should make the insurance process more manageable. The Salem police officer who responded was kind and helpful, ensuring we were safe and that all the paperwork was in order. Cops get a bad rap sometimes, so shoutout to Officer Belfiore for being awesome.
To complete the week, I discovered a project I worked on had gone a bit sideways. It was just one of those things that happens sometimes, not anyone’s fault, but it happened on my watch, and that makes me madder than a bag of bees. Again, once the initial annoyance wore off, I realized that as a writer, no one’s ever died because of something I wrote or did on a project. I tell stories; I don’t perform brain surgery. NASA doesn’t rely on my calculations to launch the space shuttle, and the World Bank won’t collapse if I don’t balance my checkbook.
Ask anyone who knows me—I am not Sally Sunshine. Some would even say that for me, a “positive” outlook is when I’m positive I will be ticking someone off. This attitude of being less pessimistic and more optimistic is new for me, so it might take me a minute. Today, when I opened my car door, it creaked, the hinges popped, and flakes of Meteorite Metallic Gray paint fluttered to the ground. I realized I’m still a bit annoyed. Accentuate the positive? OK, sure—but not all the time. I’m still an Irish redhead, and that doesn’t just go away.
Brenda Kelley Kim has lived in Marblehead for 50 years, and is an author, freelance writer, and mother of three. Her column appears weekly.