Self Editing

"Happy talk
Keep talking happy talk..."
-Oscar Hammerstein, "Happy Talk" from South Pacific

"You've got to accentuate the positive,
Eliminate the negative..."
-Johnny Mercer, "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive"

My life, like everyone's is full of a variety of events and emotions, positive and negative. Yet, when I sit down to blog, or write in my journal, I edit myself, recording the positive and remaining silent on the negative. Even when I write about the negative, it is in a positive way.

Why is that? Self-preservation, perhaps. I keep thinking that someday someone else will be reading my journal, or today or tomorrow someone will be reading my blog, and I want to look good. Goodness knows I don't want to embarrass myself!

Or maybe it's the Norwegian-American stoicism that taught me to ignore the bad and concentrate on the good. In a way, that is also self-preservation, but it is also a sense of a greater good.

For instance. My older brother is in the hospital right now. He was rushed there unable to breathe, with sky-high blood pressure and fluid on his lungs. Heart attack is ruled out but they continue to test. However, I don't feel like writing about being worried about him. Instead I want to write about how he is under the care of a friend of his who saw his name on the admittance list and stepped in and took over his care. And how thankful I am that he is in good hands, and I am confident he will recover and be better than he was before he took ill when he comes out.

I don't consider myself inspirational -- I leave that to other people who truly are gifted with being an inspiration. Instead, I think there is enough bad stuff in the world, and we all know about it. After all, conflict and struggle make a better story than competence and good work. But we need more of that.

While I am an idealist, I am not naive. In fact, in my life, I am very good at finding the the "no"s in a situation. But when I write, I don't want to make it about the negatives, I want to make it about the positives.

And so I self-edit.