Charlie’s birthday was yesterday. He turned twelve years old.
The poor boy is suffering from a wicked ear infection, so he stayed home from school and spent the day visiting the doctor, wincing in pain, and hanging out on the couch with Elysha.
When it came time for our traditional birthday dinner at the great Bell City Diner, he declined. His ear still hurt too much to leave the house. Instead, I retrieved his requested macaroni and cheese from Panera, and we later dined on Carvel ice cream cake.
As he tossed his plate into the trash, still wincing in pain, he said, “It wasn’t the birthday I was expecting, and this ear infection is killing me, but it was still a great birthday and a great day.”
I couldn’t have been prouder.
A long time ago, on a day when I was feeling down, a middle school teacher who I cannot remember said to me, “A positive mental attitude is your key to success.”
It was probably one of a million other things spoken by that teacher over the course of the school year, but for some blessed reason, that simple statement—and the belief system behind it—took hold in me. Maybe I was desperate for someone, anyone, to point me in a positive direction. Perhaps I was desperate for some kind of help or guidance in my otherwise chaotic life.
Or maybe it’s simply true, and I recognized it as such:
“A positive mental attitude is your key to success.”
Whatever the reason, something changed for me that day. At that moment, I decided that she was right. I realized that I could spend my life looking for reasons to be happy or waste my time seeking reasons to be sad.
From that day on, I have been relentlessly choosing the former.
I’ve repeated that phrase—A positive mental attitude is your key to success—out loud to myself countless times, probably millions of times, over the last three decades.
I say it all the damn time.
When I was sitting in a jail cell, awaiting arraignment for a crime I did not commit, I said those nine words aloud.
When I was sitting in court, on trial for that same crime, I spoke those nine words again and again.
When cowards attempted to destroy my teaching career years ago, those nine words served as my mantra.
I say them when riding my bike up steep, endless hills.
I whisper them after hitting a third consecutive golf ball into the same pond.
I speak them aloud when my tire goes flat, my plane is delayed, and my students have decided to behave less than exemplary.
I say that nine-word sentence more than any other sentence in my life.
I’m also one of the most optimistic, positive people I know. Despite considerable struggle and bad luck, I have always maintained a positive mental attitude. However, I’ve actually been shouted at—on more than one occasion—by people who find my positivity too oppressive and overwhelming.
But I’m still happy.
And I was happy to hear Charlie express a similar sentiment yesterday despite his less-than-ideal birthday.
Maybe he’s been listening. I hope so, because a positive mental attitude will be the key to his success, too.
Yesterday, it was.
And no, it had nothing to do with Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges.
That was simply icing on the cake.
