Looking Up

Picture a person walking along staring at the ground. This person would appear to be sad or worried. The person who walks like this never sees the houses, trees, the sky, or the sun. Life for this person seems drab and dark because that's the side of life that this downcast person always sees. In fact, if the person continues to move this way long enough, the body will become unbalanced, and pain signals will start. Unlike animals that walk on all fours, the human person is constructed to walk upright and to look around in all directions. The ability to walk and run in an upright position gives the human person a survival advantage because the person sees the surrounding area at all levels.

So far we've been thinking about some phenomena on the physical level. Something similar also happens on the psychological and the spiritual levels. It is said that a pessimist views a glass as being half empty, while an optimist views the same glass as half full. Both are correct, of course, but the optimist observes what is there, while the pessimist only sees what is not there. Like the person who walks upright, the optimist has more information. Since the optimist sees what is there, the optimist knows whether juice, water, or some other liquid half fills the glass. Meanwhile, the pessimist focuses on the empty part of the glass and has little awareness of what is in it.

When a student makes a lot of mistakes on a paper it's very easy to see nothing good about the effort that the student has made. Likewise, when a child needs much prompting and coaching to do a simple chore, thanking the child is usually not what the parent feels like doing. In coping effectively with these situations, the optimist has a tremendous advantage over the person who only sees the mistakes. The optimistic person perceives the child's strengths and uses those strengths to overcome the problems. The optimist sees the possibility that problems can be solved and that overcoming weaknesses makes a person strong. The optimist communicates hope to the child, and both of them start to feel better.

The pessimist, on the other hand, only perceives what is not there, what the paper should have been like, how the child should have done the chore. Of course, the pessimist fails to perceive that the problems can be solved and expects the same difficulties to occur again and again. The pessimist then makes little attempt to help the child do better the next time. Both the pessimist and the child begin to experience many painful feelings from this unbalanced, incomplete view of life.

On a spiritual level, too, people sometimes walk with their heads bent down, only seeing the things of this earth, only being aware of what they don't have, of what they can't do, of the fun they're not having. These people are spiritually the poorest of the poor, even if they have money and live in large houses. They need optimists to pray for them and help them look to heaven and find hope.

During this holiday season let's take our children to Bethlehem and help them look up to heaven where the angels sang, "Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to men of good will." Problems can be solved, and weaknesses overcome make us strong. If we walk around with our heads held high, we'll see life as it really is.

Mary Sue Laing, M.Ed.
Resource Teacher, St. Ambrose School
newskill7@msn.com

by Mary Sue Laing, M. Ed., New Skill, Inc. Academic Tutor