annoying sayings

[Juniper]

I'm sorry, then - I am one of those annoying people who do say things like "everything happens for a reason," or "something good will come of it," because pollyanna that I am, I believe it. I can think of a few situations that are just flat-out awful beyond redemption, but most everyday problems do indeed have "silver linings."

Like losing your job and discovering that wasn't the right career path to fulfill you anyhow. Or not getting the job your really wanted, but then getting a better one down the line. Or getting dumped by a guy you really loved, then meeting someone better.

Sometimes those things aren't as obvious. For example, when my father had a stroke and died a year later, I was (of course) devastated. I quit my job because my parents had been my kids' daycare and paying for a sitter for two of them would wipe out my paycheck. I'm so glad I had that opportunity to be a full time mom, even though we were really poor. And when he died, it really got me thinking about how short life was - I started doing what I should've been doing long ago, writing and submitting and getting published, because I thought if life's so damn short, I don't have the luxury of being timid about it! My mom died. Inheritance = college tuition + motivation to honor her memory by doing my best at it!

That doesn't change the fact that it was purely awful to have my parents die. But if life gives you lemons...really, trite or not, you can choose to wallow in self-pity, or you can choose to find what actually might be good about the situation, even if that's nothing more than a challenge for personal growth. Life may not also give you a pitcher of water, ice and sugar -- getting them is up to you, and if you sit around waiting for them to be delivered to your door, I guess you're right -- if it did happen for a reason, it was lost on you.

So there.

The sayings that tick me off the most are malapropisms and mixed metaphors. Like the ones I can't think of right now.

Oh, and let's see...."that's random," used by tweens and teens who don't seem to know what "random" means.