I have a gift for complaining. I’m known to bemoan the unsatisfactory in any element of life that irks me at the moment, and seldom run out of topics. Why, I’ve been heard to complain about other people who complain too much.

One might almost assume I didn’t have a really excellent life. One would be wrong in that. I’m just curmudgeonly sometimes.

You might think I’d carry my umbrella every single day, the way I can gripe about how imperfect life is, but when I leave my bumbershoot half-folded like this to dry after a real rain, I’m reminded that things are often better than they seem…

I like to think I’m not framing my dissatisfaction as criticism and fault-finding, believing myself too pious and generous for such finger-pointing when I know I’m imperfect myself, but of course, any notion of imperfection implies fault or blame at some level. Therein lies evidence of my fault in this insidious pastime.

So I’m working on letting my Pollyanna side dominate better. I can play my own version of her Glad Game and attempt to divine the positives in the situation and keep my attentions there instead of on the downside. I don’t think it healthy, overall, to put too Panglossian a gloss on things and lose touch with reality, but whatever their relative literary merits I suspect young Pollyanna is the more practical of my fictional companions. Instead of pretending that rotten stuff is good, she exhorts us to see what is good and use that to enlighten and change the rest.

Being grateful for what is fine and admirable and sweet is an invitation to imitate it and to use the power of such goodness to defeat the rest. Time spent in recitation and recognition of joys and strengths is never wasted.

…It’s much better to give a tip of the hat to what is actually fine and dandy in life, and be glad of it!