Blue Moon

This new years eve, our hemisphere will be welcoming the new year with a blue moon! It will also be partially eclipsed, which will be visible in Asia. When this many rare things occur together, I like to think it's a good sign. Three pretty cool things all colliding tell me that 2010 is going to be one amazing year. If you have ever thought of trying something new, let this be your year! If you want to go back to school, get pregnant, change careers, get married or anything else major, I say do it!! This is a year of opportunities, joy and growth...eat it up!!!

The Common Cold

This week I had my first cold in 15 years. In 1994, I was taking singing lessons and was always getting sick, so my singing coach told me her secret weapon: 1000mg of vitamin C the moment you feel funny and 500mg every hour that day. The 3000mg total the next day. Low and behold...15 years cold-free. In fact the only reason this one got hold was that I just moved and was already tired and run-down so I didn't notice the symptoms until it was too late.

The thing about it is, though, that I have an optimistic outlook on illness. I believe that illness can only reside in a body at dis-ease. Therefore, I maintain ease in my life. When I feel my body coming down with something, I load the vit C, and have added vit D to that mix; get more sleep; meditate a little more and think only positive thoughts. I never say, "I can't get sick" or "I don't feel good". Instead I say, "I need more sleep, or my body is trying to catch something." In this way, I don't focus on "ill" but instead on what to do about it. In the last 15 years I have had less than 5 illnesses total. All of them were tonsillitis and/or bronchitis due to my asthma. Even those, due to my powerful knowledge of my body and my ability to remain at ease, only last hours or a couple of days instead of weeks as some people experience.

Optimism and positivity are useful in very many areas in life. During this icky-health season, focus on your health and be thankful for all healing you experience.

Waving

Being a transplant to Austin, I notice just how darn friendly this town is compared to California. In California, when I smile at people (which is a habit everyone should get in to), I am either met with a tolerant half smile or a funny look. In Austin, I am often not the first to smile and am usually also met with a little wave, or a "Mornin!" if they are in ear shot. I have always known I did not belong in California. Nothing suited me; not the weather or the people or the sights. I can see what people love about it, but none of those things are my cup of tea.

Driving to work today, I was stopped at a light and looked to my left. The vista to my side was the top of trees in every fall color one can imagine, with church steeples breaking the thick. The sun was rising and there was a soft glow about the city. I couldn't stop smiling. The woman behind me began to look and then smiled too, like she hadn't noticed it.

It is very easy to get into a routine and begin to lose sight of the beauty all around us. Today's optimism lesson is to look up, down, sideways and backwards. Notice what you have been missing every single day! And take the time to wave at all those friendly faces nearby :)

The Ant

Optimistic opportunities can sneak up on you in different ways. One day while working on a cruise ship that was sailing from Florida to Los Angeles through the Panama Canal I went to the restroom. When I looked down, I noticed an ant on the ground. One, single, lonely black ant. I became curious. How did he find himself here? Was he confused? Did he make a wrong turn? As I left the bathroom and said goodbye to my new friend, I ran into the crooner on board. I told him of my discovery and we began a discussion that ended up carrying on for almost a year as we ran back into each other.

He asked if I killed the ant and I said, "How could I? What if he's on vacation? What if he's visiting someone? What if he has sick relatives somewhere in central america and this was his only way to get there?"

We laughed a lot, and this man was not someone who would normally joke much. We came up with stories and back-stories and theories about other creatures that would or could somehow hitch a ride on an expensive ocean liner. The topic then came up at a dinner within a week and several of us discussed the life of this single, solitary little creature.

When you are willing to look beyond what is, you will often find something better than reality. It may not be important, it may not change your life. But I can tell you that my willingness to be weird and creative spurred the same in many others. That I trusted these people to run with it instead of looking at me like I needed therapy, I believe, is being optimistic!

Forgiveness

Today's dose of optimism is about forgiveness.

For me to accurately describe the circumstances surrounding this situation, I have to go all the way back to 4th grade. I had a best friend whom I thought the world of, was friends with basically everyone in school and hated being at home. A new girl started school that year, someone we shall call Annie.

Now Annie was a different sort. She was needy, loud and her mother literally tried to bribe our class to like her daughter by overstuffing See's Candy valentine boxes with even more candy. She told each of us that "there was more where that came from if we were friends with her daughter." It was disturbing.

Annie didn't like me. She wanted my friends, my best friend and someone to take her anger out on. And so she did, for two years. In that time, while I did not lose my best friend to her, I did lose every other friend I had in that school, and ended up gaining weight due to severe asthma, which only fueled Annie in her ridicule.

After she left our school, somehow ironically she ended up being taught by a woman who would eventually marry my uncle. Talk about a small world. As fate would have it, however, Annie and I would meet each other again our freshman year of high school. I remember having something resembling a panic attack when I saw her across the quad. In the first year, she spoke of me behind my back as usual, but also openly threatened to fight me; which thanks to elementary school I knew she wouldn't actually follow through on.

During high school, she dated the quarterback of our football team and angered a lot of people. I can honestly say I can't recall anyone with a positive story about this poor soul. She ultimately got kicked out of high school and ended up having the quarterback's son not long after.

Fast forward now just a couple of years. The quarterback and one of my best friends' from high school had known each other for years. Apparantly Annie and he hadn't stayed together, and eventually he married my best friend. In that time, as it would happen, I had a couple of interactions with Annie. The first was when she was dropping off her son to my friends' house and he ran over to me and jumped up into my arms. I was slightly afraid what her reaction would be, but she just smiled and said hello.

The second was at my best friends' new home. Annie came over to see her son and brought her other children. She was still Annie; talking about herself, judging everything, bringing negativity into the room. Somehow though, I just felt sorry for her. With everything she had done to me, I realized, none of it was as bad as what she had done to herself over the years. She was terribly unhappy. Her children were her joy, her reason to smile. She had nothing else positive to say about her life.

A few months later, her father died. At that time, I decided to let bygons be bygons and I sent her a card. Two days later, while camping with another best friend of mine, I received a tearful message on my cell phone from her. She said how sorry she was for everything that had happened between us, how amazing it was to receive only one card and that it would be from me. She cried hard into my phone and I knew somewhere, somehow, she felt forgiven. I left her a message saying just that and never spoke to her again. She died six months later.

At her funeral, no one spoke. Not a single person could get up and say anything positive about this person. I wanted so badly to go up, to try and speak for her; but what could I say?

There are many things that happen to us in life. Many things that cause us to react, to change, to judge. I had every right to hate her, to ridicule her, to hurt her back. But in doing that, what would that have said about me? How would that have made all my tears from childhood vanish? In the end, I chose to forgive her. Not because she deserved it, not because she ever asked for it; but because I believe that people want to be good. I believe that had she been raised by a different family, she would have been good. She was always smarter than me, she was talented, she was funny. She just never knew it.

The day I sent her the card, I was being optimistic. It could have ended badly. It could have ended in her "winning" as some would say. I don't live my life by fear. I find the one, tiny, insignificant spec of possible positivity and focus on that. And in that belief, I gave a girl who didn't know she had very little time left the forgiveness she so obviously needed.

Austin

Within one week of landing in the Lone Star State, I was given a place to live, a job and had met several new friends. The city is amazing. As you enter south Austin, you are met with an intertwining of roads and what Texans would consider traffic. I smiled at the memory of all the traffic I would no longer have to endure back in California. Each street through the downtown is alive at any moment of the day. 6th Avenue, which could be described as similar to downtown San Jose, contains all of the hip places for the eclectic group of "Austinites" to spend their weekend evenings. From Argentinian to modern to street, everyone can find their flavor, and even have a different taste each visit.

As you make your way north, you first come across the entrance to the "rich" section. This is an area by the greenbelt that is home to the head of Microsoft and various other wealthy individuals. The homes here are worth millions and the trees cascaded the day I got to see it through a light fog. The leaves were in full fall color and had an ethereal, dreamlike feel. As we weaved through the glow of diffused sunlight, we came across the Colorado River and there was a canoer making his way through the seemingly still water. I felt transported to New England and could have cried it was so serene.

Further north still is the suburbs. The area opens up to different neighborhoods all teaming with families, brick facades and garages big enough to actually fit each inhabitants mode of transportation. In other states, the 'burbs are at least a half an hour from the city and show you nothing but soccer fields and Carter's outlets. For Austin, the home of self-proclaimed weirdness, the suburbs are but moments from downtown and advertise change and green living.

Being a resident in a city that boasts it's individuality and uniqueness fits me like a glove. Of all the roads I have traveled and all the sights I have seen, I am most surprised by seeing myself really fall for one place, one location, one area of the world. I have always fantasized about most cities I visit...seeing myself sitting at a cafe or reading in a bookstore or driving along a road. Reality, I am finding, beats fantasy. I finally feel home. I finally feel like I want to invest my energy into something. I finally feel like my life has a direction.

I couldn't have found my new life without an incredible dose of optimism amongst some of life's toughest tests. I am going to offer a dose of optimism each day. I anticipate no one wanting to read it but myself, and that's fine. But if you do, then I hope it makes you smile :)