Exist like you mean it.

Wherever you are, be present. Have such a presence that you are not ignored. Unless you wish to hide, of course. Then genuinely become a shadow, as real as the void that fills the gaps between sunlit slats through the window.

But be relentlessly real wherever you are and whatever you are doing. Feel honestly. Think honestly. Act honestly.

Be cheerful, but do not be relentlessly cheerful. Be irrepressibly cheerful. There is a difference between the two. The former implies you’re gritting your teeth and refusing to feel anything other than whatever joy you think you have. The latter is an honest cheer that cannot be dampened by any rain because it comes from a source other than one’s circumstances.

Frankly, that honest, irrepressible chear may well revel in the rain anyway. It sees the joy in all things, even the dark and gloomy. It revels in hardship because those are the seeds of life’s great adventures. They are the proving grounds by which one can test one’s own merit. How one attains to this kind of cheerfulness, I am not sure, but I think it has to do with gratitude for all things. That includes the hard things. Especially the hard things. Even if you weep, you have a satisfaction in weeping that brings its own joy.

I am generally a cheerful person. I also joke about how spilt punch would look like blood spatter if the image’s brightness level were turned down a notch, so there’s that.

Exist relentlessly, and smile irrepressibly. Laugh at storms and dance in the rain with a gleam in your eye that says you will not be beaten.

Don’t run with scissors.

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