“It sounds like you’re getting to do many of the things that bring joy to you. And that is very good!”

These were the words of my friend, Will, spoken to me almost a decade ago.

They still resonate with me. Loudly.

Because, you see, I was disappointed when he said them. Sounds crazy, I know. But I was! I had just finished providing Will with a litany of reasons why my life was not going as I wanted it to go; how I was having to work four different part-time jobs to keep body and soul together for my family, and how even that was not adequate since it didn’t provide health benefits, etc.

And when I got done, he said those words that have haunted me ever since. I could not see why he didn’t feel sorry for my pitiful plight. I was singing/playing guitar for a living, teaching music at two other facilities, and working at the office job that used to be a full-time position. And I was weary of the pace.

Weariness is a burden, no doubt. And it can color all the rest of our lives if we allow it to take root. I am not saying it is imaginary. It is very real, and cannot be ignored for long. But a far more serious malady was plaguing me the day I spoke with Will: a combination of feeling sorry for myself and wanting others to commiserate with me about my situation was the real culprit at work.

Those were the days when I believed joy was elusive, before I realized that

joy can undergird a person’s life in such a way that tragedy, pain, and struggle cannot surmount it, cannot overtake it.

I was making the classic error of missing the forest for the trees, of discounting the good in my life because it was mixed in with the not-so-good.

When you embrace negativity, whether it is due to fear or true disaster, it invades your psyche like a cancer, metastasizing at a staggering pace. It eats up the good along with everything else in its path.

When my wife and I were newly married and I was in graduate school we were friends with a great couple, Randy and Patsy. They were so much fun to be with. After a while we began to categorize one another as either “posi” or negi,” that is, positive or negative. Guess which category I was always in?

The tone of your life is seldom set merely by circumstances.

Those who have experienced great tragedy are not always the ones with a gloomy outlook. And those who have experienced great ease in life are not always the happy and serene ones. In fact, many times the opposite is true.

Will had listened objectively to my list of jobs, and he could see more clearly even than I that much of what I was doing for a living intersected beautifully not only with my gifts, but also with my joys. I wanted sympathy from him, but what I got . . . was much more valuable. A fact substantiated by my keen memory of his words years later.

My wife reminded me, today, to hit my “reset button.” Look around, observe the beauty surrounding you, the blessings of life that are priceless, the persons that adorn your day. In a word . . . the joy of which you get to be a part.

As I was speaking with a fellow employee at work this week I used the expression “default” to refer to my natural tendency to fret and worry. Before personal computers we didn’t really describe our penchants and proclivities that way. We always knew we had emotional and psychological defaults, but we certainly did not refer to them in that way.

If I can be aware of my emotional defaults, then work toward adding some new software to my negative psyche that would be a great improvement. I might even find, as Will pointed out many years ago, that the things I am doing actually bring me joy. And I have every right, nay, full responsibility to embrace that joy.

I guess I could call that new approach “Will Power,” or something clever, right? Ha!

Perhaps you are not currently in the job you thought would bring you satisfaction, or the relationship you just knew would make all the difference, or the financial situation you dreamed of having, or the level of health you counted on. Hit the reset button on your life.

Look at your situation! Ask others close to you to weigh in on your situation, too. Do not discard their points of view just because they might clash with yours. You may find yourself quoting their words many years hence.