Even if your ceiling is dripping, that doesn’t mean you have to be upset; regardless of what’s going on, why not have fun today?
A Financial Drip
Yesterday as I was upstairs on my computer, my youngest son called me from the kitchen. He was dutifully doing the dishes after dinner, and I was feverishly working on a key project: building a tunnel in Minecraft. (Since Thanksgiving, Evan and I have been having a bit of fun in Minecraft; it just pulls you in! After all, why not have fun today, am I right?)
I reluctantly left my tasks to find out what he was going on about. As I walked into the room, I saw him at the sink, washing up the last of the dishes.
“What’s up, bud?”
“I thought you might want to know about that.” He pointed to the ceiling. There was a bubble of paint about the size of half a baseball. It seems we had a leak. As I inspected it wondering if the entire roof needed to be replaced, all I could think of is “how much is this going to cost me?”
The Value of Worry
Lately I’ve discovered something. Worry has not helped me. It limits me. It scares me. It makes me make bad choices. It has no value. Where thinking through possible outcomes and planning may be fruitful, worry is simply as bad as fear. It’s all but a parasite.
I started to worry about this problem, but lately I’ve realized how many things are working out and how much believing in things happening makes them work out. I started changing my focus. I thought about it. I’m not sure how bad the expense would be tomorrow, but I couldn’t do anything about it right now so why not have fun today?
Let it Go
I decided to have fun playing with my son. We had a great evening. I wasn’t sure what the next day had in store for me, but as I thought about it, I simply thought “why not have fun today?”
Later that evening, I noticed water around the water line into the upstairs toilet. I realized that the wet part of the ceiling was not in the one story section of the kitchen, but that part had the second story above it. It wasn’t a roof issue, but seemed to be from the water line going to the toilet. Where the baseboards and tiles showed moisture, it looked like there might be an issue with a pipe.
It’s a better scenario than a roof, but a bad pipe in a wall or floor isn’t fun either. But I decided not to worry about it. After drying it, I laid down paper towels to see if there was a way to determine where the issues were. After all, despite the possibilities, why not have fun today? I might as well make the most of my attitude; it won’t change the outcome.
Evan and I had a great night, and I felt well rested. I checked out the paper towels and discovered something: it was simply a bad inlet line into the toilet, the one accessible without going into the wall or floor. Despite the amount of water, it was slow and nearly imperceptible. If I could fix that one line, it should all be fixed. It seems worrying wouldn’t have solved much anyway.
Rain or Shine
Regardless of the things that may be getting you down, why not have fun today? Worrying won’t solve anything and there’s a great day available to you.
What’s more, the more you get in the habit of believing the best, the more the best comes to you. There are a lot of people that believe that something supernatural happens when we believe in the best in situations like this. That may be the case.
It might also be that a positive attitude is more open to opportunities. It’s more focused on new ways of finding solutions. Or it could simply be that a positive mind is simply tuned to find fun in the midst of a storm.
Regardless of why, the question is simple: if it’s going to happen anyway, why not enjoy it the best you can? Why not be excited about all the good instead of focusing on the bad?
Why not have fun today?
