Soon after I began writing my newspaper column it seemed that I saw potential topics everywhere I looked. Whether it was my young son asking about the war, a neighbor becoming a U.S. citizen or watching students choke up with tears while trying to save a favorite teacher's job at a school board meeting, I found myself surrounded by subjects I could write about.
When I owned my dry cleaning business I saw dry cleaners everywhere. When I sold the business and became interested in real estate, I started to see “For Sale” signs everywhere. It’s not like they suddenly popped up, I just hadn’t noticed them before. But once I started looking, I couldn’t miss them - much like you never notice the car ads in the paper until you are in the market for a new car.
My guess is this happens to everyone. The old Seinfeld show was heralded for being about nothing. But that wasn’t true. It was about everything and anything, whether waiting forever for a table at a restaurant or losing a reservation for a rental car. But, whereas most of us seethe at such inconveniences, Jerry Seinfeld and his creative crew saw them as potential comedic dynamite. They didn’t dream up these ideas, they lived them – and saw the humor because that was what they were looking for.
There's a valuable lesson in that – you will find what you are looking for. Seek and ye shall find.
If you look for opportunities, they will come your way. If you are forever on the lookout for obstacles, they too, will surely come your way. You can look for humor and laugh or for heartache and cry. Seek kindness and you’ll be rewarded with it. Seek irritants and you will be forever irritated.
I have often read of injustices, “both real and imagined.” An imagined injustice is just that – imagined. It exists only because we were expecting it. If you really think about it, it is impossible to be blindsided by an imagined injustice. “Boy, I didn’t see that one coming.” Yes you did, otherwise you wouldn’t have even noticed.
This is not to say that life is just a bed of roses. There is real sadness, real heartache, real injustice. In fact, there is more than enough to go around, so why go out looking for more? And if in the process of ignoring imagined slights we just so happen to miss a real one, are we any worse off? It’s kind of like the “if a tree falls in the forest” conundrum. If someone hurts you and you don’t notice, were you really hurt?
This extends to people as well. Look for the best in them and you’ll find it. Look for the worst, and you won’t be disappointed. I learned the former from my brother-in-law when he lived with us back in 1993-94. He saw only the good side of people, never saying anything bad about anyone. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that he is one of most well-adjusted people I know. Contrast that with those who seem to revel not only in finding fault with others, but in their own misery as well.
Michigan’s state motto is “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.” We might be wise to steal a bit from that thought – whatever it might be that we want from life, all we have to do is look. It’s all around us.
