If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is

In one of his stand-up specials in the 80’s, George Carlin explained his problem with people who say have a nice day. Now all the pressure was on him to try to go out and have a nice day. Having a crappy day was easy, he said. You just get up.
That’s the thing with cynicism – it’s easy. And while the name of this site is Daily Exhaust (exhaust as in venting, getting things off my chest), my goal is not to make this site a huge bitchfest. I have more to contribute than that. I like positive energy. The love you take is equal to the love you make. All that good stuff.
You can find things wrong at 10,000 feet looking at the earth or 10 feet away, looking at your personal life. But that’s easy. It’s harder to keep the chin up.
This bit from Kurt Vonnegut is a great example of the attitude I’m promoting (via Northcoast Zeitgeist):

And now I want to tell you about my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is. So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

Have a nice day. Really.

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