So how full or how empty is your cup?
My challenge today asks just this very question. With out a doubt, I have and always will be a half full kinda girl.
There are definitely times when life completely sucks. Or I completely suck at life. I will not deny that it is often user error. But still, that is life. Life often sucks and it sucks equally for everyone. We always feel like we are the only one going through xyz situation and it is horrible and no one understands, but the facts are that these things happen to literally everyone.
Maybe I haven't always been quite so optimistic, but certainly since I moved out of my parents house and have been trying to learn how to stand on my own feet, I have learned to find the positive in every situation. (My mom taught me that)
I am in my mid twenties. I graduated from undergrad, went to law school, and am now trying to find my way in this world. Now to a lot of people, that's something. I've done a lot. I've been "successful." I used to teach at an alternative school and we were very very lucky to have kids graduate and only a very small handful would even consider college. But even still with all that "success" life still has it's challenges and I still screw up, regularly.
This time literally a year ago I was very suddenly and very unexpectedly unemployed. Just fired. Out of no where. Why? For being too young. My boss was a capricious old fart and decided after talking to me 3 times that he couldn't relate to me and just fired me.
Talk about life sucking.
I sold everything to pay my bills. I sold my furniture, my bed, stuff out of my kitchen. I pretty much put everything I had for sale on craig's list. At the end of it all, I had a couch and a $15 air mattress from walmart that I'd had for years.
So in the deepest of winter, I slept at first on the floor on my air mattress and then, after getting terribly sick, I put the mattress on top of the couch. The only problem was that the mattress hung over the edge of the couch cushions by about 6 inches...so if I rolled over in the night I was at risk of the air mattress either shooting out from under me or flipping off the couch with the whole thing.
I am a lot better off now. Looking back it is definitely comical now and I remember laughing at my situation then (again, glass half full) knowing that that period in my life was only a short chapter and certainly would not define my story. And indeed it has not. It's a funny part looking back now, but it was also full of lessons.
I also think a lot of people really don't know how they feel about the glass. They aren't sure if it's half full or half empty. Well I think that depends on what all you learn from the challenges in your life. If you just go through challenges with the attitude of "this sucks and why does this always happen to me? I guess I'm just doomed....blah blah blah" then yeah you're probably a glass half empty person and you will always be that way because you're life will always suck because you don't learn anything. But if you look at challenges and think "what am I supposed to learn from this? This does suck now, but this is going to be funny later. Wow, I should clearly never do xyz again and I won't find myself here" then I think you're a glass half full person.
Maybe I'm biased, but I think those people are better off anyways. It seems to me they learn more. Not putting myself on a pedestal either...as I've said before, I'm the smartest idiot I know. I'm always making mistakes...some that confound even me. But you live, you learn, you get back on your horse and you keep riding towards the sunset. The beautiful, glorious, inspired-by-God sunset.
- Scarlett
My challenge today asks just this very question. With out a doubt, I have and always will be a half full kinda girl.
There are definitely times when life completely sucks. Or I completely suck at life. I will not deny that it is often user error. But still, that is life. Life often sucks and it sucks equally for everyone. We always feel like we are the only one going through xyz situation and it is horrible and no one understands, but the facts are that these things happen to literally everyone.
Maybe I haven't always been quite so optimistic, but certainly since I moved out of my parents house and have been trying to learn how to stand on my own feet, I have learned to find the positive in every situation. (My mom taught me that)
I am in my mid twenties. I graduated from undergrad, went to law school, and am now trying to find my way in this world. Now to a lot of people, that's something. I've done a lot. I've been "successful." I used to teach at an alternative school and we were very very lucky to have kids graduate and only a very small handful would even consider college. But even still with all that "success" life still has it's challenges and I still screw up, regularly.
This time literally a year ago I was very suddenly and very unexpectedly unemployed. Just fired. Out of no where. Why? For being too young. My boss was a capricious old fart and decided after talking to me 3 times that he couldn't relate to me and just fired me.
Talk about life sucking.
I sold everything to pay my bills. I sold my furniture, my bed, stuff out of my kitchen. I pretty much put everything I had for sale on craig's list. At the end of it all, I had a couch and a $15 air mattress from walmart that I'd had for years.
So in the deepest of winter, I slept at first on the floor on my air mattress and then, after getting terribly sick, I put the mattress on top of the couch. The only problem was that the mattress hung over the edge of the couch cushions by about 6 inches...so if I rolled over in the night I was at risk of the air mattress either shooting out from under me or flipping off the couch with the whole thing.
I am a lot better off now. Looking back it is definitely comical now and I remember laughing at my situation then (again, glass half full) knowing that that period in my life was only a short chapter and certainly would not define my story. And indeed it has not. It's a funny part looking back now, but it was also full of lessons.
I also think a lot of people really don't know how they feel about the glass. They aren't sure if it's half full or half empty. Well I think that depends on what all you learn from the challenges in your life. If you just go through challenges with the attitude of "this sucks and why does this always happen to me? I guess I'm just doomed....blah blah blah" then yeah you're probably a glass half empty person and you will always be that way because you're life will always suck because you don't learn anything. But if you look at challenges and think "what am I supposed to learn from this? This does suck now, but this is going to be funny later. Wow, I should clearly never do xyz again and I won't find myself here" then I think you're a glass half full person.
Maybe I'm biased, but I think those people are better off anyways. It seems to me they learn more. Not putting myself on a pedestal either...as I've said before, I'm the smartest idiot I know. I'm always making mistakes...some that confound even me. But you live, you learn, you get back on your horse and you keep riding towards the sunset. The beautiful, glorious, inspired-by-God sunset.
- Scarlett
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