DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE 92-YEAR-OLD WOMAN who resides in a nursing home and is an example of what it means to live on Positive Avenue? She is a very proud lady, who gets fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably prepared and makeup perfectly applied, even though she is legally blind. Her husband of 70 years recently died, making her move to the nursing home necessary, but difficult.

After waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was ready. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, the attendant described her tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window. “I love it,” she stated with enthusiasm. “Mrs. Jones, you haven’t even seen the room,” said the attendant. “That doesn’t have anything to so with it,” she replied. “Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged---it’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice: I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do. Each day is like a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I’ll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I’ve stored away just for this time in my life. Old age is like a bank account…you withdraw from what you’ve put in. In my case, I’m still depositing.”
I don’t know about you, but this lady puts me to shame! I like to think of myself as a generally positive person, but I’m not sure that I would handle this life-change quite as well as she did. By saying that “happiness is a decision that one makes each day,” it is apparent that she agrees with those who say, “Attitude is everything.” A strong positive mental attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug.
Both the hummingbird and the vulture fly over our nation's deserts. All vultures see is rotting meat, because that is what they look for. They thrive on that diet. But hummingbirds ignore the smelly flesh of dead animals. Instead, they look for the colorful blossoms of desert plants. The vultures live on what was. They live on the past. They fill themselves with what is dead and gone. But hummingbirds live on what is. They seek new life. They fill themselves with freshness and life. Each bird finds what it is looking for. What do you look for as you begin each new day? How do you “arrange your mind?”