Originally Posted October 20th, 2010

I received the following comment on one of my blog posts recently. The blog entry was about maintaining a positive attitude while suffering from a chronic illness. This is the comment:

Wow! Are you for real? Where can someone get tickets to your fantasy land? Do blue birds make your bed in the morning while you skip in the meadow with Bambi and Thumper? Really? Do you? Come on dude, no one can maintain a positive outlook with a chronic illness like that. Stop the pretense and admit you are a sad angry suffering fool like the rest of us!

I decided that I would answer this as a blog entry rather than as an additional comment, and here is my response.

Thank you for your comment, and I truly feel for you that you are going through your life as “sad, angry suffering fool”. I completely respect your decision to go through your life in that fashion, and believe me, it is a choice, your choice. No one is making you do that. How you choose to go through your life is solely up to you. I choose to go through my life in a positive way, looking for, and finding the good in everything that happens in my life.

Although I respect the choice you made to live your life in a negative fashion, I think it is very unfortunate that you find it necessary to try and drag as many people along on your sinking ship as you can. You chose to go down with your ship, but please, do it on your own. Don’t try to drag everyone else down with you. Don’t ridicule those of us that decided to stay on the surface and continue swimming in the hope that we will reach shore or get picked up. Just because you have given up doesn’t mean the rest of us have to.

All I can do is hope that you let go of that sinking ship before it hits bottom, and can get back to the surface and attempt to swim to shore like the rest of us that want to survive. I may not make it to shore, but I sure a hell am not going to give up, and while I swim to shore, I am going to come across some waves that seem too large to swim over, but I am going to continue to whistle a happy tune all the way.And so to close, I sincerely wish you health, happiness, and most of all, peace and serenity.

All the best

BR

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