The Attitude Switch

Where is it?

So, our glorious Indian summer of last week has given way to grey skies and rain.

Oh misery me. Michaelmas, I find, is often a challenging season of the year. Certain happenings in my life just now make it tempting to let myself slide down into the slough of despond. How to click that attitude switch? Two strategies occurred to me.

Firstly, to tell myself, "Pull yourself together!" Good advice, actually, when our souls tend to split into the emotional, the intellectual and the what we actually, physically do and want to do. If I'm together, I'm okay. Yes, a pep talk can be effective.

Then I started to think about dark -- swamping, all-encompassing darkness and its seeming victory over the light. Staring at the flame of my small beeswax candle I realized that even the tiniest source of light gives us the possibility of being able to see a great deal, and can illumine even the most sombre cave. And thus our spirits are lifted.