People are down on the devoutly religious for a lot of things, but this is one reason that I am glad that most people have a belief in the soul, an idea that we are all connected, and a realization that none of these little problems matter in the broader scheme of things. From an LDS/mormon church leader, since deceased, President Gordon B. Hinckley:
[T]here is a terrible ailment of pessimism in the land. It’s almost endemic. We’re constantly fed a steady and sour diet of character assassination, faultfinding, evil speaking of one another.
The negative becomes the stuff of headlines and long broadsides that, in many cases, caricature the facts and distort the truth—at least the whole truth.
The snide remark, the sarcastic gibe, the cutting down of associates—these too often are the essence of our conversation.
I’m asking that we look a little deeper for the good, that we still our voices of insult and sarcasm, that we more generously compliment virtue and effort.
I am not asking that all criticism be silent. Growth comes with correction. What I am suggesting and asking is that we turn from the negativism that so permeates our society and look for the remarkable good in the land and times in which we live, that we speak of one another’s virtues more than we speak of one another’s faults, that optimism replace pessimism.
When I was a boy, my father often said to us, “Cynics do not contribute, skeptics do not create, doubters do not achieve.”
Let me urge you to desist from making cutting remarks one to another. Rather, cultivate the art of complimenting, of strengthening, of encouraging. What wonders we can accomplish when others have faith in us.
Look for the good and build on it. There is so much of the sweet and the decent and the good to build upon.
I do not suggest that you simply put on rosecolored glasses to make the world look rosy. I ask, rather, that you look above and beyond the negative, the critical, the cynical, the doubtful, to the positive.
