I used to wake up every morning, turn on the computer, and spend all morning before the rest of the family woke up reading the survivalist blog that I’d set my home page to. I was an expert on all the bad things that could happen to me and to my family…every threat and solution…everything that should and did keep me awake at night. For years I did this…all the news that was fit to print was just fuel for my paranoia.

I drive a rural postal route for money now ( I almost said to make a living…but by the grace of God I wake up every morning still breathing… I don’t think that the USPS has much to with my living) and one of the perks of my job is that I get to listen to books on cd as I open every mail box in my part of the world. Some of the books I’ve gotten to listen to have been about the Law of Attraction…the idea that what we think about determines what and who we are and what happens around us. It hit me after a little while that I had to question just what I was attracting with this interest in survivalism. I’m pretty convinced that we find what we’re looking for…and I was looking for the bad like knowing it was coming was going to help me prepare for all the worst to come.

I guess that the real turning point for me was when the writer of the blogs wife passed away. He loved her…you could tell by how affectionately he described their interactions…how he respected her contributions to their efforts to prepare, to build a business and blog….and then she was gone and I couldn’t help but feel that it was really pretty sad that so much of their time together was spent preparing for the bad times to come. Our time is pretty limited here on earth…both my parents are gone now and the fact of all of our mortality makes more of an impact on me than it did when I was 16…and I’ve lived long enough to know that bad things happen…but good things happen, too. (The people up in the northeast know it…you can’t go on if you don’t believe that good can come).

I don’t think that I steer the outcome of my life with an obsession with only good thoughts….I don’t think I have that power…but I do know that I notice a lot more of the good things when I’m looking for them. I can’t continue to prepare for the worst…but I can prepare in anticipation of the better things to come. That’s the choice I make…that things are better than I think…that the undercurrent that runs the strongest is one of good.