What if everything is exactly the way that we imagine it to be? For better or worse?

In TV newsrooms across the country in all 210 markets, there are the same types of employees. It’s as though the stations are staffed by Central Casting. There’s the quiet editor who barely says a word to anyone, an overly flirtatious producer, and the reporter who runs around in a panic about every story like he or she is covering the shooting of John F. Kennedy rather than the annual story about chilly weather meaning it’s time to cover your plants, bring in the pets from the outside, and wrap your home’s pipes.

There’s also the curmudgeonly aka bitter photographer. I’ve known a few. One would lean back in a chair in the newsroom every time managers from the corporate office were in town.

“We’re gonna be sold.”

Others went on and on about how, one day, all the photogs would be gone and producers would be shooting, editing plus writing and producing the newscasts. Mostly, this made the new producers open their eyes really wide and look a little panicked. I’ve been hearing this since the 1990s.

I used to say to others about the curmudgeons, “One day in the year 2050, the station will be sold and the new owners will bring in robots to write, produce, edit, run cameras on the set, and anchor. Then so-and-so is going to look down from heaven and say with great drama and a fist raised high,

I knew it

What if everything we think is true, really is true?

You’re going to be fired from your job, the neighbor is going to report your barking dog to police, you aren’t going to get tenure from your university, the house isn’t going to sell, or you will never love and be loved ever again your divorce?

Or what if it all means precisely what we think it means?

He doesn’t want to spend time with me. He hates me. She didn’t compliment my work. She thinks I’m a terrible employee.

Suppose our understanding of the world is the only appropriate one?

Everyone is racist, life is unfair, you’ll never get what you want.

So does this mean that if you lie on your death bed having lived a life of misery and one in which you believed everything was terrible, you’ll gain a glorious sense of righteousness? You can be justified in your thinking that, yes, the Universe hates you.

Ultimately, it would be a pretty dull state of affairs if everything really was exactly what you assumed or expected.

We all have bad luck every once in a while. But we sure have a wonderful world of magic. No one’s life is full nothing but bad things. And I highly recommend looking at all the cool surprises.

What amazing discoveries you can make.

I’d grow weary trying to convince the photog curmudgeons to completely change what they say or think. But you can change how you let their bitterness affect you.

Be open to a different perspective.

It may be highly relevant and it could yet alter everything.