It's a Wonderful Life

If you want to win friends and influence people--and why would you, but apparently it's quite popular--you've got to have a spring in your step, a smile on your face and a song in your heart. For some folks--myself included--that's a tall order, and so they end up with few friends and little influence, not to mention a low Klout score. Turns out mine is 19, which is like half of 34, a number considered "abysmal" and low enough to have kept some guy from getting hired for a job for which he was otherwise quite well-suited--or so I heard. As for the spring, the smile and the song, I ask you: Is anybody happy--and if so, how do they do it? Who could be, except perhaps the deaf, dumb and blind--with war and destruction and disease and depression ravaging the pathetically striving occupants of a dying planet that is quickly running out of air, water and various species of animals you never even heard of but will surely miss once they are extinct. (I think I hear my Klout score dropping.)

Now try this: Is everybody happy? You sure should be, for who wouldn't smile on a day like today? All's right with the world, the sun is shining in a glorious blue sky, the birds are singing and God in Heaven is smiling down on the Earth, offering his children another wondrous day in Paradise. (This bromide does not work if you have read the news lately.)

I suppose the right way to feel is somewhere in the middle: Things are bad all over, and they might be even worse for me some of the time, but they aren't really terrible today so I guess I'm fine. It's a little long, but I think that's my new mantra. I will certainly use it if I ever decide to meditate, which up until now I have not done successfully because I always think of something.