Day 137 - making the best of what you have

I just read this quote tonight that sparked inspiration to write today's entry: 'Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections.' It's often that we focus on the negative aspects of our lives, people, circumstances and almost everything thrown at us in life. I feel as though it's a conditioned quality we've developed as a society and a civilization. Ignorance is bliss, because the more educated we get about ourselves and our world, the more I find that we compare things to the better things we know are out there. Happiness, I've come to realise, in many cases, is a choice. It's easy for us to fall into criticism of everything around us, and how it doesn't measure up to what is good. But what about making right now good? As we put weight on the negative aspects of any given moment, we take away from the present, rather than making the best of what we have. I went to an art exhibition this weekend with a friend of mine. The show had its flaws, as anything does, but we enjoyed ourselves. A few people I new went to the same exhibition only to come back with criticism and complaints about how 'awful it was' or 'redundant and not the best it could be'. But this friend of mine, for whatever reason, enjoyed herself. She saw the flaws in the exhibition, but chose to focus on getting the most out of what it was trying to offer. Spreading negative opinons of these sort of things for one thing, isn't giving the time and effort put into something that is being provided for your enjoyment the respect it deserves and secondly only deters people from participating and potentially improving future events. And with that in mind, the best way to improve on anything is to look at both the good and bad qualities. And I find her outlook very admirable, and I feel very lucky to have spent my evening like that.