Putting on your “Happy Pants”…one leg at a time
In the late 1990s, I wrote my first column for the McCook Daily Gazette. Before letting me start, I had to promise Editor Bruce Crosby that I would have a column every week, no excuses to take a week off. If I remember correctly, the first hiatus was when my fourth child was born Sept. 7, 2001. It took four kids under the age of five to make me take a break from writing.
Over the years, I have written about things happening in the community, current events, and episodes from my own family which people thought I was making up but were always based on truth. Yes, that same son born in 2001 still has a BB in his chest, shot at point blank range by his older brother. And yes, his grandmother chased the injured son around the house, trying to rub an aloe vera plant on the wound. It is true - write what you know.
At one point, the focus of the column switched to all the happenings at the YMCA. And there was always something going on, even if I had to stretch it a bit to make the connection. There will be even more happening at the YMCA over the next few years, so it will be exciting to watch what happens there.
And for the past few years, I have been writing on behalf of the McCook Community Foundation Fund, trying to highlight the good things going on in our community, noting the things which could be a valuable resource to others, or how everyone can make a difference in our community. Because in the end, we are all just trying to make McCook a better place to call home.
If there is one underlying theme, it is to stay positive. Regardless of how my day or week is going, no matter what is going on in the world, despite how other have been treated, I try to pull on my “happy pants” every week and reflect on all the good things around us.
But sometimes that is hard…
We live in a world where division is the norm, rather than the anomaly. We live in a world where there is drastic inequity, financially and socially. We live with natural disasters such as drought and fires but just as many disasters are man-made with wars raging around the world.
But in the end, hopefully everyone is working toward one goal: making a better world for themselves, for their families, for their friends and for their community.
Yes, there is division, especially when it comes to politics. But if we remember that we actually have more in common than we have different, then we should be able to have civil discussions, learn from each other and come to at least understand one another even if we don’t end up agreeing.
Yes, there is inequity but if we would all work to help one another rather than tear each other down, we would be making a better world for everyone.
And we will always live with natural and man-made disasters, but that is when we see the best in people. It is when they come together to support one another. It is when we realize our differences don’t matter.
Sure, there will be days when we question why we are working so hard, just to get by. There will be days when we wonder why people think or do the things they do, especially if we don’t agree with them. But this is an opportunity to get involved, to make those connections, to make a difference.
We live in a great community where we have tremendous resources to get things done. We live in a part of the country where we can get things done if we work together. We have friends and neighbors who are willing to help because ultimately, we all want a better world.
Yes, some days, it is hard to put a smile on your face and to stay positive. But just taking a moment to reflect on the good things we have, to think about about all that we take for granted, to appreciate the hard-working, authentic people around us, it isn’t hard to realize how good we really have it. While we will sometimes have “sweatpants” kind of days, just putting on our “happy pants” may help us realize all the good around us.
