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Negativity.
         It's a weed. Negativity is anger, sadness, hatred. It's road rage and bad manners. It's bitterness and distant. It's greedy, rude, selfish and inconsiderate. Negativity is vain and immature.
         1 Corinthians 13:4-8 says, "⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
⁸ Love never ends..." 
         Some of you may recognize part of that as my tagline, it means so much to me, but that's irrelevant. 

Negativity is everything love is not.

         I feel like getting a job has enclosed me in it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my job for the most part, but...well, let me explain.
        When I was young, when I was growing up, I was not naive to it by any means. I knew all along that negativity was everywhere. I saw it; I heard it; I even felt it, but for the most part, I was able to ignore it, because I was me. I was my own person, and I could ignore the whole world if I pleased. And if I didn't ignore it, I blocked its shadow with my own personal sunshine, because that's the gift God gave me.
        Even after graduating high school and turning 18 ("becoming an adult"), I was still able to continue ignoring it. I guess because I could respond however I wanted, I could do (to a certain extent) what I wanted, and I could go where and when (again, to a certain extent) I wanted.
        But now I have to work. Now I have to drive places and be there on time. Now I have to sit in my teller window and be a teller. Now I'm married, and I have a son that watches me and looks up to me, and I HAVE to be a good example.
       I have recently acquired road rage. It drives me INSANE (no pun intended) to watch people be so RUDE (cutting people off, riding ones bumper, NOT getting over when you're the world's slowest driver), when it's so EASY to be courteous.
       And my job: I understand how they feel. With half the country in poverty, they need someone to blame, someone to yell at for their own financial problems, but please let me tell you, World- Your local bank teller is not the person. I tell people all of the time, I am the lowest of the low. I am a PART TIME, twenty hour bank teller. I do not make rules, and I do not have the authority to bend them either, so all you do by yelling at me is upset a wide-eyed 22 year old girl who wants to just take her cash drawer and stand in the Stewart Pkwy/Garden Valley intersection and toss money around.
       I would never, of course, but a girl can dream, right?
       Oh, and by the way, when you yell at us and get angry, it just makes me want to NOT help, because if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all!
       AND there's a' WHOLE 'nother topic I can't even mention, because of who might read this, so I'll end with this, a prayer:
        God, I need my sunshine back. I'm tired of walking away frustrated at things I can't help. I'm tired of being angry at people I don't even know.

       If you want to know how to live...love. Live according to 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. Here's another helpful list: http://www.gurusoftware.com/GuruNet/Personal/Factors.htm
Hint: live on the positive side!

I'll leave you with this...
        I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered, full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something...
 
...That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.

Here's hoping...

"[Love] bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

1 Corinthians 13 : 7-8a