In response to Matt’s recent post about the power of positive thinking—seeing glasses as half-full rather than half-empty—a reader draws Matt’s attention to this recent article in The New York Times.

The article mentions a cancer patient who virtually willed herself to concentrate on the aspects of life that were within her control, rather than the aspects of being ill that were not.

From the article:

“During her cancer treatment several years ago, Ms. Gallagher said, she managed to remain relatively cheerful by keeping in mind... a line from Milton:

“The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.”

“When I woke up in the morning,” Ms. Gallagher said, “I’d ask myself:

"Do you want to lie here paying attention to the very good chance you’ll die and leave your children motherless, or do you want to get up and wash your face and pay attention to your work and your family and your friends?  Hell or heaven — it’s your choice.”

Matt responds:

Thank you for passing that article along!

I think it’s a great commentary, and I’d like to share it with all of our people who come to the Blog so they can be enriched by this thought.

I absolutely believe that we make our own world.  Some people feel it’s a fool’s world, but I think it’s the real world.It’s difficult to live as a victor when other people think of you as a victim.

But again, we live between our ears.

I believe that happiness is an acquired taste in many cases, when we live in such times where every miserable thing that happens makes news in the papers...

Rarely do we have a headline that says, “100 People Laughed Until They Fell Off Their Chairs!”

I wish we did.  I’d go get 99 friends and see if we could duplicate the event, although I suppose it would be hard to find 99 people at one time who wanted to laugh about something.  We could probably find a lot of people to scream and holler about things, though!

But you’re absolutely right that we make our own reality, and I believe it’s a great gift.

When we find it, we should hold onto it.  We should cherish it, and when we can, we should share it with others and help them enrich their lives by watching a fool who doesn’t know any better laugh when he sees his favorite canoe going over the edge, thinking, “Thank God there’s nobody in it!”

Matt