{"id":1039,"date":"2014-04-12T17:39:28","date_gmt":"2014-04-12T21:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/?p=1039"},"modified":"2025-07-08T15:27:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T19:27:12","slug":"always-look-on-the-bright-side-of-life-and-going-outside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/2014\/04\/12\/always-look-on-the-bright-side-of-life-and-going-outside\/","title":{"rendered":"Always Look On The Bright Side of Life (and going outside)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"ltr\" id=\"docs-internal-guid-7caa323e-57de-5af8-991d-db55ec4937ba\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/03\/Robert.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-981\" alt=\"Robert\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/03\/Robert.jpg\" width=\"80\" height=\"115\" \/><\/a>On Thursday, the Classics Club had a special viewing of <em>Monty Python\u2019s Life of Brian<\/em>. Probably one of my favorite scene from the movie is the final scene; Brian\u2019s being crucified due to bureaucracy screw ups, and he has been abandoned in no short order by his friends, the government, his followers\/stalkers, his girlfriend and his mother. Things are looking pretty bad for him&#8230; until one of Eric Idle\u2019s characters starts to sing a cheery song about looking on the bright side of life. The message is simple: things in life never really turn out how you want them to. You might fail a test (not saying that I did, I\u2019m just using it as an example), you might get sick, your flight home might get delayed a few hours, but you shouldn\u2019t let that bother you. You should just smile and press on and not worry about all the things that have gone wrong in life. It\u2019s kind of like Everything is Awesome in a way; you shouldn\u2019t worry about screw ups and failings, and instead focus on everything that has gone right in your life because that matters more in the end.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Me for example, I\u2019m not a perfect straight-A student, I\u2019ve been unceremoniously fired (sort of) from a past job, and I\u2019ve damaged both my parents\u2019 cars on separate occasions. Do I worry about that? No, I\u2019m thankful for my parents, who understand me and encourage my creativity. I\u2019m thankful for my girlfriend, who also understands me and tolerates my weirder moments. I\u2019m thankful for my sister, who comes up to see me every now and then and we go out for lunch, and that always gives me a nice energy boost. I\u2019m thankful for my friends, both here at Wabash and back in Oregon, who share my interests and are also capable of putting up with my weirder outburst. I\u2019m thankful for my extended family, who have been an inspiration to me and have encouraged me and enjoyed my work. And I\u2019m thankful for my skills as a writer, without which I\u2019d probably be a much more boring person.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">So I say look on the bright side of life, because more often than not the good things in life will outweigh the not-so good things. Those you should lock away where you can never ever <em>ever <strong>EVER<\/strong><\/em> find them.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1040\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1040\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/04\/Angry-Kitty.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1040\" alt=\"Unikitty thinks you all need to be more friendly\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/04\/Angry-Kitty-300x124.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"124\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/04\/Angry-Kitty-300x124.png 300w, https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/04\/Angry-Kitty.png 635w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1040\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Unikitty thinks you all need to be more friendly<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" id=\"docs-internal-guid-7caa323e-57df-ab86-eb27-6b4cc42f3fb8\">Anyway, on to other topics. It\u2019s a really nice day here in Crawfordsville. Nice enough that I went for a walk, and had a great time of it except for the parts when the wind picked up. Not to say I don\u2019t like wind (I love it), it\u2019s just that I don\u2019t like it when twigs and dirt fly in my face. But I shouldn\u2019t complain, it\u2019s not like it\u2019s a sandstorm or something. Anyway, I went for a nice walk, just some time to get some fresh air, clear my mind and get some ideas flowing, and I took this picture of \u00a0the arboretum:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1041\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1041\" style=\"width: 168px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/04\/Nice-day-in-Crawfordsville.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1041\" alt=\"It's pretty!\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/04\/Nice-day-in-Crawfordsville-168x300.jpg\" width=\"168\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/04\/Nice-day-in-Crawfordsville-168x300.jpg 168w, https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/04\/Nice-day-in-Crawfordsville.jpg 222w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 168px) 100vw, 168px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1041\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">It&#8217;s pretty!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" id=\"docs-internal-guid-7caa323e-57e0-481f-156b-3cab0c2c7e2c\">The grass is a bit dead and there are no leaves on the trees, but it\u2019s nice to see some green after several months of brown. In a few weeks the leaves should come out (I think; it\u2019s easier to tell in Oregon), and everything will be all nice and pretty. I\u2019ve said before that I\u2019ve got finals and hard work ahead for me, so it\u2019s times like this when I can get outside (and Dork Club, never forget Dork Club) that I am able to keep a level head and not freak out too much.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">And never forget:<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WlBiLNN1NhQ\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WlBiLNN1NhQ<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday, the Classics Club had a special viewing of Monty Python\u2019s Life of Brian. Probably one of my favorite scene from the movie is the final scene; Brian\u2019s being crucified due [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bobby-black-17"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2014\/04\/Angry-Kitty.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1042,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions\/1042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/class2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}