Tag: Lorie Sheffer

Last week I posted a photo of a miniature snowman being melted in my oven, captioned “Piss off, Frosty!” as a way to say I am ready for spring. (Our snow blower had broken mid storm that day.) That got more likes than almost anything I have ever posted, and the comments were all laughter and humor.

I also posted a story about a mysterious water puddle in my basement and my husband’s and my search for the source. That one ended with him flushing the powder room toilet upstairs, while water rained down on my face as I was looking up at the basement ceiling. Again, lots of “likes” and laughs from my friends.

Then I took note of the people who posted their little challenges as full-blown, stress inducing complaints. Sure enough, the comments were all friends joining in the outrage. These were life shattering catastrophes like not enough foam on top of their latte and the “stupid idiot working the drive thru window forgetting the ketchup packets for my French fries!”  I almost expected to see an angry, torch-bearing mob marching through the snow in the direction of the golden arches.

Lesson learned: Anger and frustration are contagious. But so is humor. It’s all in how we choose to spin life’s little challenges.

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“Do you hate him for abusing you all those years?”

I knew a woman who carried it with her, holding tightly to her hatred, for 90 years. She held it close in her heart until the day she died. I wondered if the same were true for everyone whose childhood memories of a leather belt extended beyond an accessory that held up their pants.

“No. If I were to carry around hatred for him then I would still have to live with being abused every day. I’d be abused by my hatred. I learned to let go and live the life I want for myself. That is how I made it stop. I learned to become the father I always wished I’d had. None of us can rewrite the past; what we can do is to make sure the life we create will some day be a past that our children and grandchildren look back on with love and happiness.”

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Police in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, received a call during this week’s ice storm. A man said his 90-year-old aunt could not be contacted, and could someone please check to make sure she was OK. He was not sure the name of the road on which she lived; he thought it was River Road, and she lived in a trailer. Power was out in that area, and she was alone.

Southern Regional Police Chief John Fiorill spent the next 4 hours navigating icy roads, downed power lines and fallen trees trying to find her. Areas near the Susquehanna River are dotted with mobile homes, which sit along winding, hilly, sometimes one-lane roads. Chief Fiorill checked all of the trailers in the township that he could find. Finally on River View Road, he saw a hand lettered, cardboard sign in the window of a trailer. It said, “Help Me”.

Inside he found the woman, no heat, phone or electricity, bundled up in heavy sweatpants and socks and gloves, scarf and coat and hat. She had also bundled up her little dog, who was waiting to be rescued along with her. The police chief said he doubts if she would have survived another day. He contacted relatives, who were anxious to take her in with them but who had no way to transport her. So Chief Fiorill loaded the woman and her little dog into his vehicle and drove them to safety with her family.

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A decade of pessimism. Polls have shown that for an entire decade, the majority of people have had negative attitudes about our country. Ten years of looking through the lens of pessimism. How sad. How exhausting. How habitual.

I think back over the past ten years. I have gone to 8 funerals. My husband lost his job of 25 years. Two of the most important men in my life struggled through life threatening illness. I’ve had exactly three mini vacations, overnights, in the past 7 years. And yet I do not feel this sense of pessimism that seems to be sweeping the country. I’m not a very religious person, not one of the faithful. And yet I see hope and beauty all around me.  I look for the good in people and refuse to focus on the negative. Why? Because to do anything less would, in my mind, be a waste of this gift of life that I have been given. Perhaps I choose to remain positive because of, and not in spite of, all of those heartbreaking moments.  We can choose to be pessimistic, or we can choose to be optimistic. For me, it’s an easy call.

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