Today's Meditation:

Sometimes I find myself starting to get down about the future and the possibilities in my life.  When I send in a resume and I don't even receive an acknowledgement of it, then I start to take it personally, thinking there must be something wrong with me that keeps someone else from even wanting to interview me for a position.

But I really don't know enough about such a situation to allow myself to be pessimistic.  I don't know if an in-house candidate was chosen before all others, or if someone with a much better resume was chosen.  I don't know if there was a lot of discussion about me, or if three people though I should be interviewed but the boss made an executive decision.

And I don't know what's a few weeks or months in the future--perhaps getting this job would make it impossible for me to accept another position that's much more suited to me and for me.  Perhaps I would have been working with people who would have seriously limited my potential or who would have treated me poorly.

All we can do is recognize that we always will face change and uncertainty and that our futures should never be scripted, for that script will be altered.  If we can relax and let life take us where it will, we can get much more out of life and living, and we can be optimistic enough to know that we don't know enough to feel bad about certain situations.

Questions to consider:

How would you define being pessimistic?

Why do so many people have the tendency to look on the dark side of things and think the worst of the future and its possibilities?

What do we really know about the future, even one hour from now?

For further thought:

I have become my own version of an optimist.  If I can't make it
through one door, I'll go through another door--or I'll
make a door.  Something terrific will come
no matter how dark the present.

Rabindranath Tagore