Nature or Choice?

The cowboy has asked the Bag Lady many times, “How can you be so f***ing cheerful in the morning?”

This makes the Bag Lady wonder how someone can NOT be cheerful in the morning. She is cheerful most of the time. Perhaps she is too dumb to know that she shouldn’t be cheerful. In fact, her mother was fond of telling people that when the Bag Lady was a baby (of course, she wasn’t called the Bag Lady then – she knows you’ll be shocked to discover she has a different name!) when she was a baby, her mother never knew when she was awake because she never cried. Hmm, perhaps there IS something wrong with her! Actually, she made up for that in her angst-filled teen years, according to her brother. HE accused her of being hyper-sensitive, which upset her all the more until she figured out what that big word meant.

The Bag Lady has quite a happy nature, but she also made a conscious choice years ago to strive to be easy to get along with, to have a positive outlook and, for the most part, to ignore the negative. She does not always achieve this, mind you; she’s cheerful, not a total idiot! She has a dark side to her nature, too, but she chooses to keep it to herself most of the time.

Now, she wonders how her blogging relatives will respond to this post. Do they see her as cheerful? Hmmm.

The Bag Lady must have an open, honest countenance, though. She is the lady in the supermarket that strangers talk to. Almost everyone smiles at her (perhaps she’s funnier-looking than she realizes), and she is always surprised when total strangers speak to her. Case in point: she was in the baking goods aisle one day when a young, 20-something woman walked up to her and asked her if she had a recipe for fruit dip. Now, as it happens, the Bag Lady does have an absolutely fabulous, simple recipe for fruit dip, but what she doesn’t understand is how this young girl knew that the Bag Lady would! Does the Bag Lady look like she throws fabulous parties? Or does she just look like she must have a lot of recipes for really Good Things (Martha, eat your heart out…)

But I digress.
What the Bag Lady wants to know is this: how much of being cheerful is nature, and how much is choice? Are you cheerful most of the time? Or do you make an effort to appear to be cheerful? Or do you go around, bitchin’ and moanin’ about your plight, growling at anyone in the vicinity, making everyone else’s life miserable? And if you do this, does it make you happy?
Just wondering.