Are you an Optimist or a Pessimist?

A Parable: (source is Anonymous)

A family had twin boys whose only resemblance to each other was their looks. If one felt it was too hot, the other thought it was too cold. If one said the TV was too loud, the other claimed the volume needed to be turned up. Opposite in every way, one was an eternal optimist, the other a doom & gloom pessimist.
Just to see what would happen, on the twins’ birthday their father loaded the pessimist’s room with every imaginable toy and game. The optimist’s room he loaded with horse manure.
That night the father passed by the pessimist’s room and found him sitting amid his new gifts crying bitterly.
“Why are you crying?” the father asked.
“Because my friends will be jealous, I’ll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff, I’ll constantly need batteries, and my toys will eventually get broken,” answered the pessimist twin.
Passing the optimist twin’s room, the father found him dancing for joy in the pile of manure. “What are you so happy about?” he asked.
To which his optimist twin replied, “There’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!”
__________

This parable caught my attention because I really believe that 90% of all success or failure in people’s lives is determined by their attitude. People have asked me in this blog, how I manage to cope with Leta. And my answer is that by nature, I am an eternal optimist. That said, I also have made a conscious decision in life, to look for the best in others, not the worst. It is too easy to find fault in people.

What has been wonderful about having Leta in my life, is that because she has no filters and no social boundaries, she continues to put herself out there with all her imperfections and she asks the world to love her anyway. This very act has helped me re-define my notion of whether the glass is half-empty or half-full. For Leta, the glass is always half-full, despite all her limitations. In fact, Leta is the happiest child you will ever meet.

If I saw the glass as half-empty, I would have never made it through the last 16 years. Optimism is a very important survival skill. Without it, I probably would have thrown myself into despair and given up. Instead, every day with Leta, I continue to dig through the horse manure looking for the pony.

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