Smile Broadly and Often

OK, so my idea of The Good News Times is not unique. Just type “good news” into WordPress.com and you get: 299,420 results for good news. Wow! So here’s some more good news: there are lots of people out there who want to focus on good news as opposed to bad news. Of course, some of them have headings like “no news is good news.” Well, even half that is quite impressive, and that’s only one website. Type it into Google and you get 37,300,000 hits!

Everyone has their little twists—babies, food, god, sports, stuffed bears. Hey, whatever works is good. Whatever makes you smile is good. Whatever makes you think good thoughts is good. I just watched Julie & Julia, and laughed and cried outloud. I feel good all over. I agree with Julia: food makes me happy. Maybe’s there’s something to those Laughing Clubs. I ordered The Laughing Clubs of India by Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding). I will report more when I’ve seen it. When I mentioned it to my friend, she said, “Want to start a Laughing Club?” So you see, the thing about goodness is it’s contagious.

Here’s something really lame, my high school yearbook quote: “If you smile at me I will understand, ’cause that is something everybody everywhere does in the saaaaaammmmee language.” Raise your hand if you recognize it. If not, click here. Well, it’s true, isn’t it? A smile is universal and usually evokes a smile back. Like looking at a baby. I think we all need to be more like a baby and smile broadly and often.

But here’s the thing. Can you continue to smile broadly when things don’t go your way? Like the other night when I was waiting for my friends to show up at The Pub, having reserved a table, when I finally realized they went to the wrong pub! After chugging my beer and feeling like quite the idiot, I apologized to the owner for holding up the table and asked him how much I owed him for the beer. And do you know what he said? It’s on the house! You are an example of good news, my friend! Later, with my friends, we laughed and enjoyed each others’ company.

Thich Nhat Hanh talks a lot about the power of smiling. Look at this guy. Now that is one happy dude! True, he’s a Buddhist monk, but we can all be inspired by him, can’t we?

I think this is the point. It takes practice to be happy. It takes a little bit of discipline. Buddhists monks have a lot of practice. It’s their “job,” sitting in meditation practicing basic goodness. But you too can practice basic goodness. Look for goodness. Seek it out. Or better yet, be it.

What is Good News and How to Find it, or Better Yet, Create It

What constitutes good news? It’s anything that makes you smile, makes you happy, makes you feel good, makes you laugh, and generally promotes well-being, a positive outlook, and joy. Compare good news with bad news, which pisses you off, makes you angry, makes you sad, makes you cry, makes you numb, and generally promotes illness, a pessimistic outlook, and negativity.

I have an ongoing debate with a friend about listening to the morning news. He turns it on reflexively first thing in the morning so he can “stay informed.” I leave it off because I know what I’ll hear: endless news about bombings, killing, wars, violence, corruption, financial chaos, and politics. Do you ever really learn anything? If occasionally you do, is it really worth listening to all the drivel and opinions and speculation interspersed between the bad news to get to one little gem? And I’m talking NPR here, folks, not TV news or even the newspaper.

Well, this morning I chanced it and was rewarded. I heard a story called An Indian Doctor’s Cure All: Charlie Chaplin, about an Indian doctor who has dedicated his life to sharing laughter to cure disease. I mentioned this to a friend, who was reading Ode Magazine, whose online byline reads: “The online community for Intelligent Optimists.” Their August issue has an article on the curative powers of laughter. My friend had even heard of Laughing Clubs, where people go to, well, laugh and which were started in India. Well I’ll be darned! Like I said, I don’t reach out to the media very often, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover this magazine. A community of intelligent optimists. I like it!

For some years, I have been thinking of starting a Blog called The Good News Times, as my own microscopic attempt to combat a world that seems obsessed with bad news and negativity. While there is certainly good news out there, we rarely hear about it in the mainstream media. I recently gave my friend a challenge to find something positive every day. Granted, sometimes it can be a challenge. But if you look for it, you can find it. And if you can’t, then the only thing to do is to create it. So this is the motivation for my Blog, to share good news. My other motivation is personal: I believe that looking for good news is a good discipline for keeping a positive outlook.