It’s, you know, perspective..

Yesterday was a very weird day.  I found out that a classmate from high school passed away suddenly.  She was not a particularly close friend in school, and we’ve only seen each other a couple of times since then, but still… it’s very sad.  I was reading through her blog last night and trying to take in her life and her death, and trying to retain perspective.  And trying pretty hard to remember that someone I know died today, so maybe I can take a little break from whining about a dumb boy, hmmmmmm? 

Reading through some other blogs recently, I found this one about remaining positive.  Honestly, this isn’t something that comes naturally to me.  I don’t try to be negative, but there is some combination of sarcasm and experience in my life that seems to come out negative.  I don’t particularly want to be this way, but I figure it’s just part of my makeup.  This girl seems to disagree, and she lists some tips for living a positive life.  The first tip is this:

Stop Doing Things That Make You Unhappy

My first thought on this was no shit, this chick’s a genius, but I’ve been reflecting and think this might be the smartest thing I’ve ever heard.  Thinking hard about it, I realize that I do a LOT of things that make me unhappy.  Some of the things I do are out of compulsion and some because I am by far my biggest critic in life.  I beat the crap out of myself (so you don’t have to!) a lot, it’s not good and I’m working on it.  What if, for a change, I decided to give google.com a break from stalking every person living or dead that I believe might have slighted me in the smallest way?  What if I stopped obsessing about things I no longer even want but did not give up voluntarily?  I wonder if that might make me more positive.  Another tip reads like this:

Surround Yourself With People Who Lift You Up

Genius, right?  Obviously, we can’t wholly control this – some of those people might employ me or be assigned to teach me, or be related to me or whatever, but when it’s my choice – why don’t I always choose this?  I have always been the type of person to have 5 great friends instead of 30 so-so ones, but even those have changed through the years.  I have started to realize that not every friend I have is lifting me up.  Some are very surface and I would never dream of being honest with them, and some are just so negative about everything that I find myself feeling awful after spending time with them.  I think it’s just habit for me to continue to make plans with them instead of consciously thinking about how I want to spend my time and what I want to absorb from others.  So, like everything in my life right now, it’s a process, I’m processing.