Remember class rings? When I got mine in high school it was too small and had to be reordered. That meant everyone in my class had their ring except for me. We had a tradition where we would get different people to turn the ring, until we got to the number that equaled the year of graduation. I decided to make the best of it, so I took the pull-tab from a can (remember those?), put it on, and had my classmates turn it. It was funny and I was able to enjoy the tradition the same time as everyone else.
Then one of my closest friends said she would have been really upset if it had been her ring that did not fit. And she said it over and over, any time that she saw me with that pull-tab ring. I didn’t mind her having an opinion, but it seemed that she wanted me to be upset, too. Did she think I was not honest about it? The lighthearted approach apparently did not sit well with her.
I don’t know why I remembered that story. Generally it’s a good thing to consider other people’s feelings or points of view, and often we will tell people about other ways of seeing things. Usually, though, it’s a matter of cheering someone up or looking at the positive side of things, rather than the other way around. Sometimes I find myself in a bad or inconvenient situation where being upset does not help. Say a flight is running late — I can’t do anything about it and the people who can are aware of it and doing their best. Keeping a pleasant disposition might be the best I can do.
I can also ask Papa Legba for open doors and smooth paths, and he is a Lwa who always has a positive outlook.
Love, Khouzhan Lucy
Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Comments