if I had wide angle eyes

I didn't have to work today, and so I stayed home and packed and thought about how wonderful it was to not have to work. Before I knew it, I was mentally complaining about my job in all the worst kind of ways, and I'd gotten myself into a grumpy depression, dreading the workday I've got to face tomorrow. Luckily for me, I do sometimes posess the ability to be smart and snap myself out of it. Today, it was remembering something I'd written almost a year ago, after a particularly different kind of day at work. Here's a (rather long) excerpt:

"Working in retail, you meet some special people. I suppose last night, I was just asking for it, but it seemed like everyone that came in had something to offer me if I just looked for it. But really, I suppose that is the case all of the time.
There was a woman buying her daugher a gift because someone had broken into her checking account. She bragged for a solid 20 minutes about her daughter... Rarely is it good things that are shared with me from customers. The mother's husband came in having just bought some sort of random computer-related cable, and although his wife was blabbing to a random sales associate about their daughter, and running around trying to put together a gift bag, go to the bathroom, and show him a card all at the same time, he just laughed and smiled, and said "i love you...
'There were 3 15-ish girls that wanted to share with me their excitement over their upcoming Homecoming. I could care less about that stuff, but just seeing how giggly they got about some unnamed yet ever-present boy, and how big their smiles got when I asked them about their dresses made me almost wish I was 15 again, just so I could remember what it feels like to think dresses and boys are the most important things.
'And I love those sheepishly mischevious looks girls give when they think I can't see them pinch their boyfriends on the rear. I love the looks the boys give when they realize that their girlfriends hand is grazing (and staying) a little south of their belt.
' And I can't forget the laughter of the little old man who just wanted to talk. He didn't need a card for this, that, or the other, he was just lonely, and wanted to let someone hear about his days in France during WWII. That's where he met his wife. She died about a year ago."

I don't know why that day should have felt any different from the scores of other days I have at work; I certainly didn't enter it in any better mood than I usually do, and I still had a lot of the same rude or tired or irritable customers I always have, just like I had the same happy, easy to please, kind customers I get. What made my perspective shift to see the good in people?

Knowing myself as only I can know myself, I'm aware that I'm a pretty not-nice person. I'm cynical, halfway bitter, sarcastic, and I get irritated really easily. And all of my bad qualities are amplified at work. I don't have a bad job, it's just not what I want to be doing. It's retail, it's angry customers and corporate rules. But it's a job, and it will be helping me pay my electric bill in 10 days, so I'm keeping it. I just wish I could keep my good moods as easily.

I have little faith in myself to put myself in a good mood. I know people who can force themselves to smile, to be happy, and I'm jealous. Seriously, insanely jealous. Because I have never been able to do that and probably never will. So I guess that's one of the reasons I love it so much when I am able to see things in a better light, because I know it's not me changing my perspective. It's got to be something bigger, putting those ridiculous happy thoughts in my head, creating better stories about people that may or may not be true, but the point is that I'm happy, instead of feeling irritated with the human population. I don't know why, but I am almost fully convinced that it's God changing my perspective; not because I've done anything to deserve that, I didn't even pray before clocking on to feel better about things (because why would I want to feel better about my job? Why would I want to be in better moods, seeing people as good? Yeah, did I mention I'm sarcastic?), but I think that sometimes God really does laugh at me, and changes things up a bit, just to see if I'll notice how much better the world can be.

I don't really know, but I think sometimes God wants to show me how much happier I could be if I were just more like Him. He's not doing that to show off, or make a world of little clone-Gods, but I think that He really, genuinely wants us to love each other. It's pretty hard to love someone if I don't even see them as being more than a mean customer. So He shows me the good people. He shows me the bad people's whole stories. He shows me when I'm being a jerk, and I can kind of appreciate that, because it makes the day go by faster and sometimes I even have dates planned after my shift.

It all depends on how you look at it, I guess; perspective is one of those things that is annoyingly eye-opening. It makes things new for you, and the newness of things is indeed something to enjoy.