THE STORY OF AN OPTIMIST
Optimists do not look at the dark side of things. They are
always hopeful. They believe that every
cloud has a silver lining. As such, they face their miseries and sorrows without
losing a fast grip on their life.
Here
is the life-story of an American optimist Molly Fancher. She died at the age of
67 after dragging out an existence of long suffering on a sickbed. She had a happy and healthy girlhood. It was
in May 1864 when was just in her teens that she was thrown and badly hurt while
riding a horse. A year later before she had fully recovered, she was seriously
injured in an accident which most rapidly caused the loss of speech, sight and
hearing. Not only this, she also became paralysed, and though she gradually recovered
the ability to speak, to see, and to hear, some impact of paralysis continued
to persist. In fact, up to the day she breathed her last she was almost
helplessly bedridden.
The only bright side of her sickness
was that her mind remained clear, and she had the use of her hands. Quite
admirably, her biographers wrote that despite here terrible burden of suffering,
she contrived to get through life cheerfully. To a newspaper reporter who
visited her at her modest Brooklyn home, she said:
“Yes, I am a little, old woman now.
I have had my cross to bear. But there are others, and their crosses are
heavier than mine. I am not so badly off
as some. Think of the poor people who are hungry, and without work. Why not
pity them?”
Bedridden and paralysed though she
was, Molly Fancher knew how to look at life philosophically.
If a brave, cheerful attitude was possible to her, after half
a century of unceasing invalidism, surely such an attitude is possible to all
of us, no matter what our present circumstances may be.
Molly Fancher discovered that
pessimism was no cure for trouble and gloominess only made bad matters worse.
During her period of blindness, deafness and dumbness, she did not allow worry
and despair to overwhelm her. Consequently, her cheerfulness did not only
enable her to endure the long years of illness, it became a positive factor in
keeping her alive.
She was always cheerful and never
became idle. She continued to work. Her biographer recorded that lying on her
bed of sickness, able to use only her hands, she had written thousands of
letters, and done a vast amount of knitting, embroidery, and wax-work. Thus she
kept her mind occupied, and by so doing kept herself from falling a victim to “in-growing
thoughts. “ Not to brood, but to keep
busy, that was Molly Fancher’s sickroom philosophy -------the philosophy of a
wise woman.
5th
February 2020 G. R. KANWAL
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