Count the Other Column

There is no shortage of reasons to become discouraged these days.

Turn on the television, and you are immediately reminded of political division, violence, economic uncertainty, international conflict, and social unrest. Open social media, and the algorithms seem determined to convince you that outrage is the normal state of humanity. Every scroll brings another reason to worry, another reason to become angry, and another reminder that something else has gone wrong.

It is little wonder that so many people carry a sense of heaviness.

Our minds are naturally drawn toward danger. Long before 24-hour news cycles existed, human beings survived because they paid attention to threats. Those who noticed the rustling in the grass were more likely to avoid becoming lunch. That instinct still lives within us, but today it is constantly fed by a world that profits from our attention. Fear keeps us watching. Anger keeps us clicking. Outrage keeps us coming back for more.

Before long, we begin keeping a ledger of everything that is wrong.

We remember every disappointment. Every failure. Every diagnosis. Every political frustration. Every unfair comment. Every relationship that didn’t turn out the way we had hoped. We become remarkably good accountants of life’s losses while forgetting that another column exists.

Not long ago, I decided to try a different exercise.

I began making a list, not for publication and not for anyone else’s benefit. It was simply an inventory of experiences that I have been blessed to have during my lifetime. At first, the memories came slowly, but once they began, they seemed to pour out faster than I could write them down.

I have seen snow in Hawaii.

I have snorkeled in the crystal-clear waters of Okinawa.

I have stood on the breathtaking fjords of Norway and walked through the halls of the British Museum. I once sailed a small boat in the harbor outside the home where my family lived in New Zealand. I have watched shepherds tending their flocks in the hills of Turkey, stood on a glacier in Alaska, and looked across the endless plains of Saskatchewan.

As a 14-year-old boy, I learned to fly a sailplane. Years later, I experienced the exhilaration of flying in an F-16 and later spent time in the simulator of a Boeing 737. I have gone deep-sea fishing off the coast of New Zealand and trout fishing in the mountains of Colorado with my grandfather, memories that still bring a smile decades later.

Then there are the moments that no passport could ever provide.

I watched each of my four children enter this world.

I have spent nearly four decades serving in the United States Air Force, working alongside remarkable men and women whose dedication still inspires me. I have taught, mentored, preached, restored historic aircraft, worked with technologies that once seemed unimaginable, and met people from cultures and countries I would never have known had I stayed in one place.

As I continued writing, I realized something that genuinely surprised me.

I had spent far more time remembering my disappointments than remembering my blessings.

The list on my desk was becoming astonishingly long. It represented experiences that millions of people will never have, not because they lacked ability or character, but simply because our lives unfold differently. Yet until I forced myself to write them down, many of those memories had quietly faded into the background of ordinary life.

How easily we forget what has been given to us.

The truth is that most people have a list every bit as meaningful as mine, even if the destinations are different. Perhaps you’ve never stood on a glacier or seen snow fall in Hawaii. Maybe you’ve never left your home state. That doesn’t mean your life has been any less rich.

Perhaps your greatest memory was watching your daughter graduate from college. Maybe it was hearing your son call you “Dad” for the first time. Perhaps it was summers at your grandparents’ farm, camping beneath a sky filled with stars, catching lightning bugs with neighborhood friends, learning to fish with your father, or sitting beside your mother’s hospital bed and realizing how precious ordinary conversations had become.

These moments rarely make headlines.

They don’t trend on social media.

They aren’t discussed on cable news.

Yet they are the moments from which a meaningful life is built.

One of the Apostle Paul’s most remarkable qualities was his ability to remain thankful despite circumstances that would have broken many people. Writing from prison, facing uncertainty and hardship, he repeatedly encouraged believers to give thanks. His gratitude was not rooted in comfort but in perspective. He understood that suffering and blessing are not mutually exclusive. A difficult chapter does not erase an entire story.

That may be one of the greatest antidotes to the negativity surrounding us today.

Gratitude does not require us to pretend that evil doesn’t exist. It does not ask us to ignore injustice, suffering, or loss. Instead, gratitude restores balance. It reminds us that while the world contains much that is broken, it also contains extraordinary beauty, kindness, and grace.

When we fail to count those blessings, the loudest voices around us begin writing our life’s story for us. We slowly become convinced that everything is getting worse, that little is worth celebrating, and that joy belongs to some earlier generation. In reality, many of us have simply stopped taking inventory.

As I write these words, I am sitting in my office beside large farmhouse windows overlooking the front yard. Earlier today, a tiny juvenile skink, barely 2 inches long, ran across the outside windowsill while I was working. Yesterday, I watched deer following the familiar trail along the edge of my property. A few weeks ago, a black racer crossed my front porch with complete confidence, and not long before that, a little green snake chose the concrete near my garage as the perfect place to warm itself in the morning sun.

Years ago, I would have admired the glaciers of Alaska and the fjords of Norway. Today, I find equal joy watching the small creatures that quietly share my own backyard.

Perhaps that is one of the gifts that comes with growing older. We begin to understand that a good life is measured not only by extraordinary adventures but also by ordinary moments that were never ordinary at all.

One day, my life will come to an end, just as every life eventually does. When that day arrives, there will certainly be chapters I wish had been different. There have been disappointments, failures, losses, and heartaches. Every honest life contains them.

But those pages do not tell the whole story.

The story also includes snow in Hawaii, trout streams in Colorado, shepherds in Turkey, glaciers in Alaska, quiet harbors in New Zealand, the first cries of four newborn children, the roar of jet engines, faithful friends, meaningful work, a curious little skink on a windowsill, and countless blessings too numerous to remember without writing them down.

Tonight, I would encourage you to begin your own inventory.

Take out a sheet of paper and start writing. Don’t list your worries. Don’t list your regrets. Don’t make another account of what has gone wrong.

Instead, write down every remarkable experience your life has given you. Keep writing until you think you’ve reached the end. Then come back tomorrow and see if another memory surfaces.

I suspect it will.

The problems of the world will still be there in the morning. The headlines will not suddenly become cheerful. The voices competing for your attention will still insist that outrage is the only appropriate response to life.

But something inside you may have changed.

You may discover, as I did, that while the world has certainly given you reasons to grieve, it has also given you far more reasons to be grateful than you ever stopped to count.

Sometimes the most powerful antidote to negativity isn’t denying reality. It’s remembering that goodness has been walking beside us all along.

As I look back over the experiences God has given me, I find myself saying something I hadn’t planned to say: “I have had a really good life.”

Not a perfect life. Not an easy life. But a genuinely good one.

Now some might say, “Yeah, but you don’t know what I’ve been through.”

My response to that is, “Neither has mine been free from sorrow, hardship, and loss.”

Good doesn’t mean painless. It just means that when you honestly total both columns of the ledger, the good usually far outweighs the bad. We have just stopped remembering the good.

The richest experiences are not always the ones we see. They are the ones that change the way we see everything afterward.

Now get your favorite beverage, sit down by a window in a comfy chair, and start your list.

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Dave Chamberlin runs a consulting and training company and brings more than 40 years of civilian and military aviation experience to his work. He retired as a Chief Master Sergeant after 38 years as an aircraft crew chief in the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard, and has also worked in technical, instructor, consultant, and leadership roles. He holds an FAA Airframe and Powerplant license and a master’s degree in aeronautical science, and his writing often focuses on military issues, especially those affecting aircraft maintenance personnel.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.