"Welcome, Spring!"

   This winter has been unusually brutal. It has been full of icy winds, freezing temperatures, and dangerous conditions. The other day, I saw snow falling thickly and I thought to myself, “Not again!” Many times this winter, I have felt like going into hibernation and saying, “Wake me when it's over.” You see, not only am I one of those people who gets cold at the drop of a snowflake, I'm also one of those glass-half-empty types. That's right, I am something of a pessimist. If you're a pessimist, you tend to take Murphy's law (“If anything can go wrong, it will”) at face value. Sometimes you're afraid to have too much fun, because you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
   Pessimism isn't all bad; a little of it is a good thing. If you have nothing but optimism, you might be ignoring the reality of life. The key is to be generally optimistic, with a healthy dose of pessimism. Since I tend to lean more toward the pessimistic side, I've been teaching myself to counter those whining thoughts that crop up occasionally. In math, if you multiply two negatives, you create a positive. You can take a similar approach to combat pessimism. For example, last month I thought about how the winter seemed to drag on forever; although three consistently cold months had come and gone, we still had a full month of winter to go through. And come to think of it, this winter has been so rough that I haven't accomplished as much as I wanted. And we all know how time flies. (You see how one pessimistic thought can lead to another?) Well, this is where you stop this line of thinking in its tracks and think: “Yeah, time does fly. In fact, it flies so quickly that winter will be over before we know it.”
   There is a time and place for pessimism, but for the most part, it is an unwelcome dampener of spirits and an unnecessary worrier of minds. I could say, "Good riddance, winter." But since we could all use a little more optimism, I say without reservation, “Welcome, spring!”