What
is Being Cheerful all About?
Early American author William
Fender is credited with the quote “Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely
obnoxious,” however, I think he is missing the point.
When I was in the first grade our music teacher, Mrs. Holbrook, taught us some
songs that we presented one night to our parents. One song was called
”Good Morning Merry Sunshine”. It went like this:
“Good morning merry sunshine, how did you wake
so soon? You scared the little stars away and shined away the moon.
I saw you to go to sleep last night before I ceased my playing. How did
you get way over there and where have you been staying?”
My father must have like the song because he proceeded to wake my brother and
me up every morning for several years singing it at the top of his lungs.
While his early morning cheerfulness felt obnoxious at the time, it did teach a
powerful lesson for starting the day with cheerfulness.
Just like you have to decide to be courageous, you have to decide to be
cheerful too. Do you think my dad felt cheerful every morning as he sang
that song? Of course not! But I have learned that cheerfulness is
contagious. At several places where I have been employed I have been
known to walk the halls singing the song made famous by Fred Rodgers of “Mr.
Rogers Neighborhood” that goes “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…” for
the purpose of raising the spirit of my team. They would at first look at
me as if I was nuts but in a few moments their cheerful meters were pegging
higher.
Author Joseph Addison puts it this way, "Cheerfulness is the best
promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body."
That is what being cheerful is all about.
"Suffering
becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not
through insensibility but through greatness of mind." Aristotle
