Beauty

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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I am susceptible to other people's feelings and words. I try not to show that a lot, but it is true. When I am around negative people, it affects me. 

Fortunately, there are a lot of positive people in my world. There are people who look to find points of agreement and moments of beauty; people who praise first and criticize later and demean and degrade never; people who work diligently in the pursuit of joy and grace instead of taking the easier path of being negative. Well, it is an easier path and more people will join you on it, but the costs are pretty substantial in the long run.

Sometimes I don't get to choose who I am around. Sometimes I am not strong enough to resist their active pursuits of misery, negativity, unhappiness, and gloom. 

But not all the time. Sometimes I am around positive people who look for happiness and work every day - probably most moments of every day - to find beauty and understanding.

And sometimes I am able to avoid the negative people -- even if I am required to be around them on occasion. One of my strategies is to tune them out. Another is to wish them well - because they clearly are suffering, and I don't want that for anyone. And yet another strategy I have when I have to be around them is to put my fingers in my ears and scream, "I can't hear you! I can't hear you!"