Ain’t It Awful

“Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibilities.”

Albert Schweitzer

I’ve Been Thinking. . . a lot about the negative people I encounter and the potential impact or influence they have on my life. Let me tell you about one such experience.

"Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome aboard United Express Flight 5362 to Chicago. Before we take off, please make sure that your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position, and that your seat belts are securely fastened. This is a non-smoking flight and we remind you that smoking in the lavatories and tampering with smoke detectors is prohibited. Buckle up; have a pleasant trip and a nice day."

"They expect me to have a pleasant trip flying in this puddle-jumper?" the passenger next to me blurted.

"This plane is a sorry excuse for a jet," she continued. "I can't believe I paid to ride this thing just to spend a week with my mother-in-law. Oh well, we’ll probably never arrive anyway."

Biting my tongue, I smiled and nodded only to acknowledge I had heard her. I waited to suggest to my flying friend that her chances for having a super day were slim to none. Besides that, I sympathized with the mother-in-law having to endure her stay.

She continued entertaining me throughout the flight with everything that was wrong with her life. I just kept smiling and graciously nodding. When the plane landed, I assisted her with the luggage in the overhead compartment and struggled to restrain myself from giving her a bit of advice about life. Instead, I smiled and encouraged her to make it a great day.

I thought to myself walking through the terminal; “Could it be this person was not aware of her negativity? Was she really that fatalistic about her life? Surely she didn't intend to let this flight dictate the quality of her day.”

This lady was apparently unaware that she had given control of her day to an airplane she didn’t like.

A friend told me about a man who shouted the same three words each day from his street-corner newsstand. “Ain’t it awful!” he would say to each passersby while extending a newspaper. People bought a paper because they just had to know what terrible thing had occurred. People are attracted to, love to talk about and dwell on the “awful”.

Tragedy and dire predictions always make the front page, but if we become preoccupied with bad news, undesirable circumstances and unfortunate life events, we will succumb to a lifestyle of “awfulizing” – a pervasive pessimism that clouds every situation with gloom.

Charles Swindoll calls this “verbal pollution,” passed around by grumblers, complainers, and criticizers. “This poison of pessimism,” Swindoll writes, “creates an atmosphere of wholesale negativism where nothing but the bad side of everything is emphasized.”

In his classic book, Man's Search for Meaning, Dr. Viktor Von Frankl describes the incredible experience of surviving a Nazi concentration camp. He came to a sudden and dramatic conclusion that little would happen in this environment over which he had control. One thing Dr. Frankl knew: he wanted to live.

He learned to focus on small positive events. He savored them and let his mind dwell on their benefits. He took control of his responses to the brutal events and discovered that "one's ultimate freedom is the ability to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."

The value of this principle for your life is phenomenal. Taking responsibility for your tomorrows is a life changing, awesome, exciting discovery.

In the absence of this decision, you are held prisoner to every situation, habit, experience, person, or environment which you encounter. Decide now not to let anyone or anything decide what your day will be like. Tell yourself this minute, “I will take 100% responsibility for the quality of my day no matter whom or what tries to influence me to become an “awfulizer”.


“The important and decisive factor in life is not what happens to us, but the attitude we take toward what happens. Circumstances and situations may color life, but by the grace of God, we have been given the power to choose what that color shall be.”

Charles R. Woodson