Chicken Soup for the Soul Read online

  But at the same time that I’m planning for the next forty months, I’m planning for the next forty years. Because that scenario is equally likely. I’m dutifully applying my SPF moisturizer so I won’t get skin cancer twenty years from now, I’m redecorating a couple of rooms in the house, and I’m planting new trees on our property.

  How does this all fit into a book called Think Positive, Live Happy? One of the things that I learned from editing this book is the value of living in the moment. At the beginning of this cancer journey, I would be enjoying a “moment,” whether it was hosting Christmas Eve, or watching a bird in our yard, or having dinner with our children, and then break down as I thought about what it would be like to not be around to do that again. I was sad for myself and for all the people in my life. Now, I’m strangely happy. I’m thoroughly enjoying all the “moments” right when they’re occurring. I’m letting myself look forward to all the good things that are coming in the near-term, like vacations and another grandchild… and tomorrow’s three-mile walk and the New York Times word puzzle that my husband and I will do tonight before we go to sleep.

  It sounds defeatist, but we all die of something, and the older we get the more likely that is, so I’ve tried to reposition this whole mess as just creating a little more specificity for me than most people have. It will be this cancer, on the earlier side, or it will be something else way down the road, but in the meantime there are sixteen waking hours every day that I can fill with fun, purpose, and my favorite people.

  — Amy Newmark —

  A Splash of Perspective

  Living in the moment means letting go of the past and not waiting for the future. It means living your life consciously, aware that each moment you breathe is a gift.

  ~Oprah Winfrey

  My presentation was horrible. I knew it before I heard “we’ll be in touch” from the client. My boss wouldn’t look me in the eye and the rest of my day was spent in relative silence — I was left alone, in reality. Finally, I left my air-conditioned office and of course, outside there was a heat wave; it was hot as hell and I was boiling in the three-piece suit I’d bought specifically for this big day. I was hot literally and figuratively as three buses passed, too full to stop and then the one that did stop should have kept going because the AC wasn’t working.

  I boarded the bus but was unable to stand it, so I squeezed my way off at the next stop. I would just walk the mile and a half to home. A country mile and a half it seemed as I passed bodegas, unleashed dogs, beggars, young girls in short shorts and young boys cat-calling. “Idiots,” I thought to myself, annoyed further, as I continued my journey. I refused to take off my jacket, purposely maximizing my frustrations — when it rains let it pour was my philosophy.

  A block from my building, I heard the water splashing and kids screaming so I knew the fire hydrant had been turned on.

  “If I get wet…” I muttered, without even thinking about taking an alternate route. As I turned the corner, sure enough, there was a group of kids frolicking in the water. They were courteously on the lookout to stop the water from spraying on any pedestrians, so when they saw me in my suit they stopped the water and when they saw my mean look they even got quiet. The younger ones in bathing suits, the girls wearing shower caps and the boys with water guns all stared at me as I started to stride by.

  Then I noticed a little one, no older than five, holding a water gun down by his side, eying me a little harder than the others. I eyed him back. Then his brother, who I’d seen around the neighborhood, nodded at him like he was saying, “I dare you.” My eyes tightened a little further as I communicated my own “I dare you” to the five-year-old. Then his eyes darted, planning his escape route through the alley, and in that spilt second I knew I was going to get soaked.

  And he got me, behind my ear, before he ran toward his exit. What probably only took a few seconds seemed like an eternity as I headed toward the alley to block his escape, but as I took my first step, his brother, the instigator, tossed me his water gun. It was either a bazooka, a water gusher, or a cannon, I didn’t know, but as I caught it in one fell swoop, I was able to pull the trigger just as I met my “assassin” at the alley. He squirted back but his shooter was no match for my power, so instead he turned his water gun on a few other little kids who were stunned into stillness at what just happened.

  Then, I too turned my bazooka on these kids and before long we were in all-out water warfare. Soon, there were water balloons hailing from upstairs windows and the whole block seemed to be involved. Needless to say, I was soaked and laughing like I’d never laughed before.

  I couldn’t remember my last water fight and if I did, it couldn’t have been as fun as this one. One of our neighbors, an elderly Spanish lady, was selling flavored ices when she heard the commotion. She pushed her cart around the corner and later she told me that witnessing this water fight made her day. She invited us all over for some free mango ice. All of us grown-ups and kids.

  It took a five-year-old to bring out the kid in me, put life in perspective, and help me realize that you may not be able to control disappointment but you can still let in the joy. And you can ruin a suit, too, and not really care!

  — Marcus A. Nelson —

  A Plague of Joy

  Joy doesn’t just happen. I have to pursue it.

  ~Elizabeth Myers

  It was Friday at the end of a really, really long week. Mike and I were having friends over for dinner and a glass or two of wine — definitely two.

  Just before I got home, Mike texted me to say that he had to stay late at work. I was now on my own to get everything ready for the night. Already running late myself, I could feel my frustration mounting as I drove to pick up Haydn and Michael from school. I rushed them into the car and informed them that we were making a few stops before heading home, and that they needed to help me tidy the house.

  Both of them started whining immediately. I turned and pointed a threatening finger at them, giving them fair warning that I was not in the mood to listen. They crossed their arms and sulked. Michael even whispered under his breath, “This sucks!” For the next hour, I dragged the boys from one place to the next. The more I needed them to hurry, the more distracted and silly they became. I told them to cut it out, but they didn’t seem to listen that day. My patience was wearing thin.

  Just as we finished our last errand, the boys reminded me that we needed to stop at the pet store to pick up crickets for their bearded dragon lizards. “You promised,” they said. And they were right. I had. But in the frenzy of the day, I’d completely forgotten. “Fine, but we need to be fast,” I said, and we raced to the pet shop.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were back in the car with some new passengers: one hundred live crickets in a clear plastic bag. I pulled into the driveway with only forty-five minutes left to unpack the car, clean the house, and set the table before my guests arrived. How would I make it?

  I started barking orders at the boys like a drill sergeant, but they were focused on pouring the crickets from the plastic bag into the top of their little cricket-keeper thing.

  My annoyance started to soar, and I yelled at them to hurry up, but to do so carefully.

  I don’t really know how it happened, but the next time I looked up, one hundred crickets were jumping all over my kitchen, chirping chaotically.

  I screamed and scrambled up onto a chair to get away from them. My frustration exploded, and rage suddenly gripped my senses. I could feel myself about to start yelling in a way I rarely do.

  I could continue feeling annoyed and angry, or I could let go and enjoy this ridiculous moment.

  But then the most amazing thing happened.

  As I watched my two sweet boys try frantically to capture the crickets, it felt like time slowed down, and I saw the situation clearly for the first time. They were running around like lunatics, screaming with laughter.

  It was pure joy, and it was an amazing thing to watch.

  In that spli
t second, I realized I had two choices. I could continue feeling annoyed and angry, or I could let go and enjoy this ridiculous moment for what it was.

  I chose joy.

  Laughing uncontrollably, I jumped off the chair and started chasing crickets with the boys. They were everywhere! Every time we tried to put a cricket into the keeper, another one would jump out. It was like a comedy routine. We squealed with excitement and pretty much had the time of our lives. The clock was still ticking… but we didn’t care.

  It took us about fifteen minutes to get all of the little guys into their box. Once we were done, my boys enthusiastically helped me scramble to get ready for the dinner. It became a game to see if we could make it in time. We were all in such a fabulous mood.

  Mike got home with five minutes to spare. Anticipating the cold shoulder for leaving me to deal with everything myself, he was pleasantly surprised to hear about our crazy cricket adventure. Our guests arrived. We had a fabulous dinner party, and the boys helped me tell them all about our “peculiar plague problem.” For weeks after, I could still hear chirping from some crickets that had evaded capture. It always made me giggle.

  That moment is a constant reminder to me that I should never let frustration keep me from enjoying life. Things go wrong, and there’s nothing we can do about that. But we do have the power to decide how we’re going to react to things.

  Next time you feel negativity bubble up inside, just chill, take a few deep breaths, and try to think of something that makes you happy. You’ll find something if you try. Wouldn’t you rather laugh than lose it? Choose joy.

  — Heidi Allen —

  Positive to the End

  Your actions are your only true belongings.

  ~Allan Lokos

  The glass bottle was half full of spare change. An oval piece of paper was taped to the front with five destinations written on it in colored marker: Washington, D.C., Alaska, London, Hawaii, and Italy.

  The bottle was a bucket list of sorts, and I found it among my mother’s possessions after she passed away in December.

  My mom grew up poor and lived her life without any of the material trappings often associated with happiness. Yet, for my entire life, she stood as a role model of how to live a positive, happy life. She lived her last twenty years on Social Security and had no cash. Still, she squirreled away her pennies and dimes, believing to the end she might someday feel the sand of a Hawaiian beach between her toes or tour the Italian countryside.

  I believe we could all use a role model to help us see the good in the world and keep a positive outlook in the face of adversity. I lost my role model, but not before she showed me with grace and determination what it meant to think positive.

  For my mom, life was all about finding beauty in the little things. She rarely earned more than minimum wage in her lifetime. She lived paycheck to paycheck, often going without basic needs being met. It might have been easy to become bitter and disillusioned. Still, my mother remained a positive thinker.

  As a child, there usually wasn’t money to go out to eat or go shopping for extras. Instead, my mom would scrape together two dollars and send me to the convenience store. The order was always the same: a Coke, a Charleston Chew, and a pack of baseball cards.

  We would sit on the porch and share the snack while I opened the baseball cards. She would talk to me about the players, asking which ones were the best or my favorites. It was simple, yet she turned poverty into positivity.

  Without money to take vacations or even go on day trips, we would put a few dollars of gas into the car and drive around looking at houses on Sunday afternoons. The house we lived in was perpetually teetering on the edge of foreclosure, yet we would drive and dream, imagining living in one of the houses we saw. She had always wanted a log cabin. It would have been easy to bemoan what we didn’t have, but instead she focused on what we might have someday.

  Later, when I was deep into my career and my life as a husband and dad, my mom would call with words of encouragement when times got tough. Forget that she was poor, her health was failing, and she lived alone. She always had the words to make me smile, words that echoed a positive outlook that stood in stark contrast to her reality. I can’t say I always appreciated her “glass half full” approach, but it taught me so much about how to face the many challenges life invariably throws at us.

  When getting around on her own became impossible, my mom had to move to an assisted-living facility. For many people, that loss of freedom can break their spirit. While it was initially devastating, she quickly filled her empty glass back up.

  I visited one day and found her busy knitting colorful mittens. She had seen a program on the local news about an organization that collected mittens for people in need. She used what little cash she had to buy yarn and knitted dozens of pairs of mittens over the coming weeks.

  Living on just fifty dollars per month after her bills were paid, my mom managed to donate to a veterans’ organization every year, knit mittens for the homeless shelter, and donate to an organization that provided cleft-palate surgeries in poor countries.

  I once asked her why she was sending $250 to help a complete stranger when she could really use the money. Her answer: “I have everything I need here. That poor little kid, though…” Her voice trailed off, but the message resonates with me to this day. Even in the midst of living in a nursing home where she shared a room and had rapidly declining health, my mother saw herself as lucky.

  She spent two of her last three birthdays in the hospital, taken both times by ambulance in the middle of the night. The third birthday was spent in quarantine with pneumonia in the nursing home. When I visited her in the hospital last year, she told me that she helped a woman at the home play her Bingo cards because she couldn’t see very well. She was worried that no one would help her while she was in the hospital. She refused to see what she didn’t have, instead focusing on others and what she did have. She was, in every sense of the phrase, a positive thinker. She was an inspiration, role model and fighter.

  Digging through one of the boxes from the nursing home, I came across a small notebook. Inside, in her unmistakably neat handwriting, were the words “bucket list.” As I sat and read the two-dozen entries that followed, it brought tears and a smile to my face simultaneously. Confined at the end of her life to a wheelchair, many of her wishes were astonishingly simple:

  • Visit the farmers market.

  • Go out to breakfast.

  • Visit New Hampshire (where she was born).

  As I read the items that were crossed out, I reflected on the good times we had. “See Kenny Rogers in concert one more time” was crossed off, as was, “Visit the beach,” and, later in the book, “Have Matt make me swordfish.”

  She had no money, could no longer drive a car, had no job, and was confined to a wheelchair in a nursing home, yet in her final days, she remained the eternal optimist. The nurse who cared for her the night before she passed told me that when she stopped in, my mom told her, “I can’t talk… I have to finish this cookbook I’m making for my granddaughter for Christmas.”

  Without money to buy fancy presents, she remained positive (and creative). She collected magazines from the waiting room and cut out recipes that she bound into a book for my daughter. Toward the back of her bucket list were three simple words: “Cook with Zoey.” The partially finished cookbook was on her table when I went to say goodbye the next morning. She had passed away in her sleep.

  She never got that log cabin. She never made it to Italy, London, Alaska, or Hawaii. Much of her bucket list remained to be done. But she never stopped believing, and that attitude of positive thinking was the greatest gift she could have given me.

  — Matt Chandler —

  Notice, Appreciate, Multiply

  Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different.

  ~Katherine Mansfield

  One of my favorite movies is Pollyanna, th
e story of an orphan sent to live with her crotchety maiden aunt. I loved actress Hayley Mills’ portrayal of Pollyanna, but what I loved in the movie even more was the Glad Game. Pollyanna’s missionary father taught her to find something to be glad about in every situation. The point was to look at what was wrong, or perhaps not optimal, and find the silver lining.

  The Glad Game starts with a negative and finds a positive. I felt that was how I lived. When dealing with adversity, I often said to my husband, “Aren’t we lucky?” We always found a way through. I was, by nature, optimistic. I tried to see the best in any situation to the point that more than one person derisively called me “Pollyanna.”

  In my fifties, life took a lot of sudden twists and turns. My marriage ended, my child experienced life-threatening medical issues, I had breast cancer, and my mother died. There was not a great deal to be glad about. Life was challenging, almost bleak. For a long while, it was about getting through the next day. Sometimes, it was about getting through the next hour.

  Once my son’s and my health stabilized, and the divorce was final, I was faced with choosing how I wanted to live my life. In truth, I had no desire to look at the bad for even one more second.

  I changed my thinking. Instead of focusing on the difficult things and trying to find something good in them, I focused on noticing the good already present in my life. I started small. When I woke up, if the sun was shining and cast beautiful shadows on the wall, I stopped and appreciated it. If I was walking down the street and found a penny, I appreciated that. If I was thinking I’d like to go out to lunch and a friend called and asked to do just that, I took a moment to appreciate that and be grateful for it.