It is difficult to be optimistic when there are those within our country who seem so intent on destroying it. I sometimes get accused of writing too negative. My unofficial personal contrarian (unnamed) and a few others contend I never write anything positive except on veterans. Well, as a response to the accusation, I’ll use the old adage, “If it weren’t for bad news, there wouldn’t be any news.”

I think that is basically true this day and age unless you write on spiritual matters. On that subject  I’ll leave to much wiser men than myself including my pastor, Dr. Jerry Light Sr., and my former pastor, Dr. Michael Brooks, who presided over marriage ceremonies for my wife, Natalie, and me.

I can only write it as I see it. For the most part, the negative things I offer are in hopes for a positive outcome. Sometimes it takes a negative to turn things into a positive. Therefore, if it comes out as negative perhaps it is useful in making changes or altering courses. There are any number of cases where it took a negative event to alter history and initiate change for the better.

It is true of the Holocaust where over six million Jewish men, women and children were systematically rounded up, placed in camps and brutally exterminated. They were starved, shot, placed in gas chambers, and burned in ovens just to name a few of the horrible deaths they met. It was a tragedy of unconscionable proportions, but I believe a major factor in the Jewish people returning to their homeland in 1948.

I’m not saying that the end justified the means, but chances are they might still be homeless otherwise. However, God is all powerful and anything is possible with Him.

The incident beginning on the Selmont side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge referred to as “Bloody Sunday” is another example of something negative and bad resulting in a positive or good. The Voting Rights Act may and should have come about anyway, but there is no doubt this event was in part the catalyst that helped place it on fast track.

It is regrettable it took such a shocking occurrence to gain the opportunity to vote that is fundamental to democracy in this country, but it did. Selma will likely always be identified by the negative aspect of it, and not the positive that it brought forth. Although, most residents had absolutely nothing to do with it, we all must live with the legacy.

It is important to remember and learn from history without it being embellished or diminished to avoid the mistakes of the past.

However, we can’t just live in the past either, but must move forward for a better life and future for all people.

Perhaps it would be best if we could accentuate the positive, not necessarily eliminate the negative, but latch on to the affirmative as borrowed from the lyrics of “Accentuate the Positive.”