Good or Bad in Just Stuff

Greetings!
More to contemplate—

This is a flexibility challenge. Try to figure out a way that all these
situations could be wonderful instead of the negative interpretation that
immediately comes to mind. Practice putting on different colored lenses
until you find a “right interpretation” for the description.

Example Situation: You and your family have almost no food to eat–less
than a day’s worth. You are all sleeping out the on the ground with very
little to cover you, and the nearest help is miles away.

Example Situation’s Happy Interpretation: You are on a family camping trip
with a sumptuous feast in your back packs. You stay overnight after a
scenic day’s hike, enjoy your fireside repast, crawl into your thin summer
sleeping bags, and watch the stars until sleep comes. The next morning you
hike back perfectly refreshed.

For the rest of these situations, try not to use any explanation more than
once.

1. You are up to your neck in a liquid that contains a wide variety of
   poisonous chemicals.

2. You’re resisting and violently struggling with someone who eventually
   overpowers you and pushes you out of a plane without a parachute.

3. Your body is aching with burning sensations.

4. Slowly, again and again, a needle is inserted into your body.

5. Many people all around you are counting on you in an extremely tense
   situation. They watch you closely, some are quite desperate. Then, right
   before their eyes, you fail them, and all they wanted is left unfulfilled.

6. You viciously kill an attacker. So hard do you strike out that your own
   blood is mixed with the remains of your victim.

7. Someone tells you, quite seriously, “You are going to die. Prepare
   yourself.”

8. You’re colder than you have EVER been in your entire life. You can
   hardly breathe. In your fear, you are almost certain that you are dying.
   The brightest light you have ever seen shines painfully into your eyes.
   Then the worst pain you have EVER felt in your entire life hits you.
   Happy solutions are given below the questions to ask yourself.

Ask yourself,
What’s more important when interpreting a situation, my imagination or the
context of the situation?

How do words (and how they are strung together) so strongly overpower my
neutrality? How often do I allow an “inner jury” to consider something
before I have an opinion about a situation?

Do I always have an interpretive choice or do some words and phrases “always say what they mean”?

How often do I assume the wrong context for a situation? Should I become
more “aloof” or scientific about my conclusions?

Why do I feel like these “situations” are unfairly worded? Who promised me
that this exercise “wouldn’t cheat?”

Are any of life’s tragic situations interpretable or is the meaning of all
of them absolute? Wars? Famine? Genocide? Suicide?

How often do I apply a false interpretation to a behavior of mine so that
it seems “better?” Do I tell white lies?

When I look into the mirror, how happy am I with my looks? Do I think
photographs look like me?

Do I lie to children? Do I attempt to pre-filter reality for them to “save
them” from something?

Happy Solutions:

1. You are swimming in a pool with chlorine and other highly diluted
   chemicals.

2. You’re a stunt person on a movie set.

3. You are in a gym working out and going for the burn.

4. You are getting acupuncture.

5. You are Greg Norman and come in third in the Masters, but you win
   hundreds of thousands of dollars playing a game you love.

6. You swat a mosquito.

7. Your friend wants to tell you about the latest thriller movie with
   incredible special effects and exaggerates in a typical fashion.

8. You are being born.

Regards,
Rick