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Looking on the bright side of life. And living a brighter life.
I was pretty damn cheerful when they were rolling my stretcher into the operating room for my open heart surgery. It was a complex operation, replacing two parts of my heart. I figured it could go either way—dead OR alive—and what the hell—I’m alive RIGHT NOW.
What am I gonna do with this moment? With the rest of my life, which could be an hour or several decades? Cry? Be angry? Resentful of the brevity?
In my younger years I’d done all that. But now, I was simply tired of negative emotions. Oh, I wasn’t going to suppress or deny my feelings, any feeling, even negative ones. Even really bad ones.
But I wasn’t going to embrace or wallow in them either. I’d let them come and go. Whatever.
My view is this: how I feel is something I want to be aware of but not obsess over. I want to concentrate on what I do.
And what we as human beings should do, however dire our situation, is embrace life and do things that are worthy of our human existence.
Living right requires certain qualities, and among those qualities is playfulness. I was playful with family and doctors that morning. I thought about asking the doctor if, after surgery, would I be able…
