...one of my best teachers.

I'm thinking. Mostly, thoughts about attitudes. And how attitudes affect so much of life. I have to keep telliing myself to have a good attitude. About virtually everything. To find some good even in the worst of conditions. A mental gymnastics, of sort. One must nip a negative or bad attitude in the bud. Or it can start to consume you. Problem is, one is surrounded by people with bad attitudes. And they can pull you down. If you let them. I resist. And so they try even harder to pull me down. Rather funny, isn't it? Anyway, I'm writing about it. Because that gives me pleasure. Helps me cultivate a positive attitude. I even have a good attitude about my father's suicide. A long time ago. I've been castigated by some suicide mourners for finding something good in the suicide. It wasn't all bad. I've deduced that almost 60 years after the fact. Yes, I've had time to reflect. Almost an entire lifetime. And certain nice things happened that might not have happened if my father had chosen to live. So it wasn't all bad. Now, I consider that a good attitude. A positive attitude. An upbeat attitude. I find a way to salvage something good. A pleasant thought. And I try to transmit that thought to my father's spirit. I tell him that life works in strange and mysterious ways. And that what I learned from his suicide was to live life fully. And happily. And positively. I've become a lover. And a romantic idealist. A political and social liberal, too. And a free-thinker. And I credit much of that to lessons my father taught me. I even learned so much from his act of suicide. My father, it turns out, was one of my best teachers. --Jim Broede