Chasing Sunshine

I was still waiting on the coffee pot to finish dripping this morning when I noticed that I had voicemail on my phone. I hadn’t turned up the sound on my phone from the night yet, so I missed the call. I played the message and heard my friend, Rhonda, calling from Texas and singing “Good morning, good morning to you!” She then proceeded to tell me some happy news about an upcoming wedding of one of the residents of the independent retirement community I used to manage.

Rhonda is one of those people who make you feel good simply by being in her orbit. She is positive and kind and supportive and uplifting. She laughs a lot and her laughter is infectious. When I lived in Texas, my office was across the hall from hers for a couple of years. I would hear her coming down the hall singing and saying a kind word to everyone she passed. Sometimes both of our office doors would be open, and she would be singing a hymn. I loved it. Being across from her was like having a daily infusion of positivity.

This past week has been especially difficult for many of us, and I’ve personally been in a bit of a funk. With another tragic school shooting in Colorado and then the violent and unnecessary deaths of Iryna Zarutska in North Carolina and Charlie Kirk in Utah, it’s been difficult to feel positive about the direction of humanity. There’s so much anger and sadness going on in the world right now. Even our United States Congress was in an uproar this week. What ever happened to our congressional leadership having manners and a sense of decorum…but that’s a whole other blog post.

I was also disheartened to learn that someone destroyed the Little Free Library in my neighborhood that I just wrote about last week. Who destroys something so innocent that is for the common good?

So, how do we lift ourselves above it all and keep moving forward amid all this negative emotion and turmoil?

We do the best we can to do good and be better however we are able. We surround ourselves with people like Rhonda who feel like human sunshine. We do random or not so random acts of kindness. We practice gratitude. We focus on things that give us purpose and meaning. We practice mindfulness. We exercise. We listen to uplifting music. We pray. We spend time in nature. Perhaps we take a break from social media and from watching the news on TV.

And, if you would like to escape into a charming book about joy, try reading “The Alchemist”. This is a book I wasn’t aware of until my son, Ryan, gifted it to me a few years ago.

Joyful blessings for the week ahead!