Positivity

I am not an opptimist. I don't consider myself to be a pessimist, either-- I know, I know, who does, right? Thing is, I try, very hard, to look at reality, even if it's dark, and to look at it clearly; hence I've always said I was a cynical realist.

My way of looking at the world fits with my depressive tendencies, surely, but we can't divorce our perspective from ourselves-- we are our perspectives. That simple thing might be the only thing we do know about the way our brains work: we are our perspectives.

This past month has been pretty shitty world-wide. People are being massacred in Syria; free speech was thrown in prison in Russia; elected officials claim degrees of rape here in the US; Roman Catholics got a glimpse of paedophilia apologies yesterday, because the kids were asking for it; the GOP is lying through their teeth to get elected; people are starving; earthquake and tsunami warning (since cancelled, thankfully) in Indonesia; flooding and hurricane in Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, people died; typhoon in Japan.

Even without reading the above stories, just a quick description of them shows they're pretty awful, huh?

So, I decided to share some good things, too.

I got the idea from Crack.com's forum thread, The PWOT Happiness Generator [Pointless Waste of Time]. A lot of forums have these, and frankly, they're fantstic! It is so easy to forget how wonderful the world is, when all you hear or see is the bad, shitty stuff.

So, I'll share a handful of things I found that are good, rather than bad, and easily found online.
I hope they're as uplifting for you, as they were for me!

1. Crack's story 6 Stories that will restore your faith in humanity, by the very talented David Wong. These stories are tear jerkers, but so awesome.

2. Happy Animal Stories Tumblr, it's a Tumblr, so it's mostly photos, but some of them, especially the baby hummingbird are squee worthy.

3. CNN's 2012 Heroes "Everyday people changing lives". Don't watch these without tissues handy.

4. Amazing Photos: Royal Observatory's 2012 best of; I love astronomy, and love photos of space. They make me feel small, in such a good way! They also tend to be eyes-watering-ly awe-inspring.

5. NatGeo's best 2010 micro-photos; these are photos taken very very close, and so give a very different field of view, reminding me that I'm also very big, compared to some other life-forms, but that beauty comes in sizes that are crazy-small, too.

6. Poetry always makes me feel better; even the really sad stuff. These are from the Academy of American Poets; there are several other sites dedicated to poetry as well.

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