Tuesday morning started out like any other day. Got up, got the kids ready for school and we head out. We are standing on the porch getting ready to walk to the car when from the tree falls a large object. It bounces off the car and lands on the ground. My car is parked beneath a large oak tree and it is not abnormal to see things fall. More times than not a squirrel is throwing things at it. This particular morning the thing that fell was big enough to be the squirrel itself. I am aghast, thinking that the thing that fell is going to get up and run away, that silly squirrel lost its footing…. Nothing moved. Everyone stood still for what felt like minute.
I am the first to exclaim, “What was that” in a rather loud voice that may have contained explicit language if my children weren’t present. My oldest son said “didn’t you see th owl fly away?” and then I knew… it was dead, but what was it. We all walked slowly over to see the lump on the ground to find a rather large, headless rat! All four of us had differing reactions to the scene below the tree.
I was appalled, my stomach hurt and I couldn’t even look at it…. I can take many things. Spiders, snakes, mice, but RATS! I hate rats… even dead, headless rats.
My youngest started taking pictures of it… most probably to show all his friends at school that morning the coolest thing since sliced bread.
My daughter was mildly grossed out and went to get in the car laughing about how freaked out I was.
My oldest son was laughing at me as well, it didn’t seem to faze him much. Living in the country for most of his pre-adolescent years and butchering chickens and turkeys must have hardened him to the sight of a headless animal… He said “the circle of life mom” and later on a Facebook post he thanked the owl for making me almost throw up….
Before this morning adventure had taken place I had written an unposted blog about our life view; Pessimists, optimists, and realists of whom we had all three in our group that morning plus one more view that I had not included… indifference. I decided that the blog I had written was boring.... This example was much more fun… if that’s the right word.
We all have our life view… how we react to situations in life… how we react to life in general… we can see the negative in everything, or we can try to see the positive. We can see reality or we can choose to ignore it.
Working in retail daily and seeing upwards of 500 ppl every day I see all three but it seems that the pessimist is much more vocal about their negative view. Maybe thinking everyone around them thinks negative too, maybe wanting ppl to feel bad for them or their situation? They are generally unhappy…
The optimist sees the problem or situation thinks positive. Usually if you do know about their problems they downplay them and give a positive that has happened or that they expect to happen. The realist looks at the reality of the situation, sometimes negative, sometimes positive, most of the time they say “it is what it is”. We all know the indifferent too…. The situation doesn’t exist….or it doesn’t matter.
I like to think of myself as an optimist but I am really more of a realist. A long time ago I adopted a motto that I saw on a business…. “no problems, only solutions” of course there are problems in life, like a headless squirrel falling from a tree, but for every problem there is a solution. Sometimes the solutions are not fun and take time to work out. I’m reminded of the time I took college algebra… complicated 1 line problems with 2 or 3 page solutions. Logic and strategy; put them in motion and forget the problem… focus on the solution!!
My solution for the rat…. Ordering the realist son to take it to the trash so I didn’t have to see it anymore… and hoping the owl didn’t have its sights set on my cats… Remember… not everyone will like your solution…. The son did not want to take the rat to the trash….The owl would prefer to eat the cats….
As I look around at the many people I encounter during the day I wish I could help some of them see the good in life because life is too short to be unhappy. We miss so much good because we focus on the bad…… remember my motto “NO problems, ONLY solutions”
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