Sunday, September 19, 2010

The glass should always be half-full......

A blur of driving to and fro from the hospital, tubes, IVs and ventilators -- that's been the last two weeks for me. But in a different role. I was not the physician this time, instead my role was of a family member caring for a very sick patient. At times, the prospects looked grim and the prognosis grave. But the wonderful physicians, nurses and the paramedical staff at Loudoun Hospital Center, especially the ICU, kept the hope alive. The glass was always half-full to them. The patience and perseverance was phenomenal. There were always encouraging words, a soft smile and a steely resolve to try to make the patient better.

Their optimism was contagious and eventually seeped into me and rest of the family. So it was then a question of "when" my mother would get better, not "if". Hope and optimism can do amazing things to a person's psyche. Hope never abandons us, we lose sight of it sometimes. And being an optimist results in a positive life cycle. All the great inventors and explorers had to have a very strong streak of optimism. Without that, I am sure Christopher Columbus would never have set sail in uncharted waters.

A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds and worries; a realist sees both sides and shrugs; an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all - he's walking on them! But as is the rule of life, nature finds a way to balance everything. We do need both pessimists and optimists in life -- one to invent airplanes and the other to invent parachutes.

"Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start being an optimist and work towards a new ending." ~ Maria Robinson

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