Adopting a Positive Attitude towards Life Experience

By Lydia Zhang, a member of Get Your Wordsworth

Life is full of ups and downs. In order to make life meaningful and enjoyable, there is a need to adopt a positive (and productive) attitude towards various experiences in life; one needs to look back and look around very often, summarizing personal and other people’s experiences, so as to draw lessons and inspirations. Such an attitude is beneficial, because it helps us meet challenges courageously, overcome difficulties, keep an open mind, and learn new things and enrich ourselves on a continuous basis.

A recent get-together with some of my childhood friends, who came from China to visit New York, revealed episodes of such a positive attitude. These friends—-Ming, Pang-Pang, and Grace—-and I grew up together in Beijing. We have kept our friendship, and we often exchange ideas with the type of long-lasting trust that can only be found among childhood friends.

Cooking with Mom

by Nancy Orans Eder, a member of Get Your Wordsworth

In many ways my mother, Sylvia, was ahead of her time in spite of the fact that she grew up in a conservative home. Brought up in an orthodox family in Boro Park, an area of Brooklyn that was overwhelmingly Jewish, my mother was the youngest of seven children. She grew up thinking that the whole world was Jewish until she went to Brooklyn College at the age of sixteen and discovered a new world . . . a world of different viewpoints, intellectually challenging and stimulating. After a very active social and political life, at twenty-three she met and married my dad who shared her world view and values. They were happily married for almost forty years. They had three daughters. I was the first.

School Bus

By Rebecca F. Rikleen, a member of Get Your Wordsworth

We could hear it from around the bend. he boxy bus, bright yellow, high on its wheels, bumped around the curve and stopped at Oatis Viele’s garage each morning at 7:30, barely daylight in December. Up its steep steps my younger brother and I hoisted ourselves and sat down quietly. Our cheeks were red and our breath was visible. Already on the bus were the silent gangly boys from the farms: one from Turnwood, another from the farm next to the fishery, and a third from next to the YMCA camp. My brother and I were new. If they noticed us, it was with a deep reserve, the withdrawn quiet of people who worked alone with their strong arms and their own thoughts.