It's Going to Be a Beautiful Day--A Paragraph a Day

It's sometimes frustrating to see just how often I have to remind myself of the fact that every day can be beautiful, and that the quality of any given day is dependent more upon the attitude that I bring to it than to things that happen outside of my sphere of influence.  I'm going to school today, and I'm going to teach.  There will be stress, there will be annoyances and negative situations, but the positives of the situation far outweigh the negatives.  I get to work with young people who have their whole lives ahead of them, and I get to at least try to influence them in positive ways.  I often don't achieve this goal, but I often do--it's an up-and-down effort.  But I know that at least I have the chance to try, and on this particular day those chances stretch out before me in my very near future.  I may fail miserably today, but even in a day's failure there are things to learn that may make tomorrow better.  The chances are, though, that I'm not going to fail, and I get to say hello to some very nice young people.  I get to talk with some of them, and I have a chance to build them up by encouraging them and complimenting them (with only sincere compliments, of course!)  I get to eat some nice meals today (and some chocolate) and drink coffee and wine, I get to go running or bike riding, I get to feel the fresh air and listen to music and watch something on TV if I feel like it.  How this day turns out really is up to me, and I'm going to do my best to make sure that the day ahead of me turns out just as I've predicted in the title.

People Helping People--A Paragraph a Day

I'm showing the film Thirteen Lives to one of my classes this week.  It's a wonderful movie that shows just how good and how kind people can be to each other, and the kinds of risks that people are willing to take, the kinds of sacrifices that people are willing to make, in order to help out other human beings whom they've never even met before.  When thirteen young people are trapped in a cave by flooding, the lengths to which people are willing to go to save them are truly inspiring, and it's a very nice thing in this world to watch a story about people helping people selflessly, rather than the typical fare that's presented to us in the name of entertainment of people hurting other people, for whatever the reason.  I like to remind myself that the world truly is meant for this--kindness and compassion, rather than hatred, greed, and harm.  It's hard to see through the haze sometimes, but films like this help to clear the air and help us to see what human beings are capable of if we allow compassion to be a guiding force in our lives.