Even in difficult times, I choose to be see the good in life.

People laugh at funerals. Not out of disrespect — someone remembers the thing the deceased always said about the neighbour's hedge, and for thirty seconds a terrible room is warm.

That is the shape of it. Not the good replacing the difficult, but the two sitting in the same hour without cancelling each other out.

Nobody has to feel positive about a hard stretch. Seeing the good is a smaller act than that: registering the friend who kept texting, the nurse who explained it twice, the fact that you ate something today.

Difficult times are allowed to be difficult. Look anyway, gently.