by Maria Yanicki

Created on: April 22, 2009   Last Updated: May 11, 2009

My sister (let's call her S) was the one who told me to see a speck of good in everything. It was recently, actually, that she told me. As far as you can see, she's an optimist. She sees the glass half full, rather than the opposite. She sees the amount of water that is there, not how much has been taken away. She also sees it as water and not something very bad for your health. She is part of a vanishing breed, much like a person I would like to mention. Let's say his name is Violinist. He spoke to me very recently about pessimism, and optimism. Quoting him: "There is always a silver lining." In other words, there's always a speck of good under all that bad. You just have to look hard enough for it. (He always has a good slice of advice for me.)

I used to be a pessimist before S and Vio told me this. I used to hate living in my house. I thought that maybe God forgot about me, focusing on other people who seems to be leading such wonderful lives, leaving me alone in the dark. However, there is always one story that I remember, and when I read it, I always seem to read it twice. It is always hung up on the wall at my grand-parents house. It was called `Footprints in the Sand`.

"One night a man had a dream. He dreamed that he was walking along the beach with the Lord. Across the sky flashed scenes of his life, and for each scene he noticed two sets of footprints, one belonging to him and the other to the Lord.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that at many times of his life, there was only one set, and he also realized it happened at the darkest and saddest times of his life.

Bothered by this, he turned to the Lord and said "Lord, you told me that once I decided to follow you that you would walk with me all the way. I don`t understand why you would leave me when I need you most."

The Lord smiled and replied "My child. I love you and I would never leave you. At the saddest times of your life, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you." (This was originally made by Mary Stevenson in 1936, when she was young and long before she knew about copyrights.)

Many pessimists should remember this story. The moral, at least to me, is that the Lord will always be there for you, no matter how bad things get. If you are an optimist, things should never appear so bad. You would always see that silver lining.

Pessimists like to call themselves realists, seeing life as little more than "Death and taxes". But it can be more than that, if you look to see the good in the situation you're in.

You can always see the good in the contents of that bottle, whether half empty of half full, whether it's water or something poisonous. The choice is yours to decide, but for me, that glass is water, and it's half-full.

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