By Barbara Kaufman

Like most of us, I often take the world around me for granted. I don’t always appreciate enough the good things, the free things that surround me. Just shrug my shoulders and wonder what problems will next arise. Will I be able to cope?

And I fear life is like that for many of us. We concentrate on the troublesome and fail to appreciate the many wonderful opportunities around us.

Last week I ran into an old friend who was looking rather down-in-the-mouth.

“What’s wrong,” I asked. “You look as if you’ve lost your best friend.”

“It’s worse than that,” she replied. “My hairdresser is retiring, and I don’t know what I’ll do without her.”

Now a good hairdresser is worth her weight in rubies. But still! I find it hard to define this as the end of civilization as we know it. I left the meeting shaking my head. My friend is reasonably well off. She has a loving partner and three wonderful children. She’s even expecting her second grandchild this month. Her health is not perfect, but it’s pretty good.

In other words, I think she has more to be thankful for than to be miserable about. But she is choosing to concentrate on her problem and not her assets. Choosing. That’s the key. We all make choices about ourselves. Whether we will feel optimistic or pessimistic. Whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. (Or as my engineer brother would say: The glass is the wrong size!)

Don’t let yourself fall into this trap. We all can dredge up problems to worry about. But let’s sit down and think about what’s going right instead. What good things are happening? What can we look forward to? As the old song says, let’s try to “accentuate the positive.”

Right now our Senior Federation is in the midst of exciting opportunities. We are trying to redesign the organization, while holding on tightly to the values and skills and talents of our far-flung membership. We want to ensure the grassroots quality of the Federation. We want to reach out to seniors and almost-seniors who need our services and our advocacy. We want to seek out and encourage leadership from every corner of Minnesota.

 That’s a lot of wants! And it’s going to take every single one of us to make them come true. Every single one of us choosing to be positive contributors to the organization and its work. Yes, I mean you! And me!