A Good Attitude Equals Altitude

We choose our altitude daily by choosing our attitude. Today was a good example for me.

A man stood beside his car which was parked along the curb in the traffic lane. His door was partially open. He was on the phone. Because of oncoming traffic, I was forced to stop behind his car and wait before I could go around him and continue. Minor irritation.

After I turned into Dunoon and parked, a young mother came along the sidewalk with her child. A window cleaner had his ladder leaning against the building on the corner and was busy at work. The toddler clapped his hands in excitement and asked, “Is he cleaning the window? Is that his ladder?” The mother stooped down to the child’s level and said, “Yes, Cameron. Well done. The man is cleaning the window. That is his ladder. Is it safe for Cameron to climb his ladder?”

The young boy considered the height of the building and the top of the ladder and shook his head. “Cameron might fall.” The mother hugged him and agreed. “Yes. Well done. Cameron should never climb a ladder he sees leaning against a building because Cameron might fall.”

I laughed and complimented the mother for the good job she was doing teaching her son. It made her smile. Her smile made me smile. Making the mother smile brightened my day. An attitude with altitude.

It made me think; had I leaned out the window and yelled at the driver beside his car talking on the phone—it would not have brightened my day. I could have chosen to justify my action by rationalizing; “He is inconsiderate. He should have enough sense not to stand beside his car and talk on his phone when he is blocking traffic.”

Perhaps it was inconsiderate of the driver. But perhaps when his phone rang it was an emergency from home; important news from a doctor about his medical condition, or a call from the hospital where his wife was in critical condition. Not knowing the circumstances that caused him to answer the phone before he got into his car leaves me in no position to judge his actions. It does give me a choice—bad attitude and low altitude, or good attitude and soaring.

I chose an attitude with altitude. I chose joy.

“A person has joy by the answer of their mouth, and a word spoken in due season, how good it is!” Proverbs 15:23.

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The Change Rose

Another name for hydrangeas is “change roses.” Hydrangeas are small bushes in the southern U.S. where I grew up. In Scotland with all the rain, they can grow into small trees.

Size is not what earned hydrangeas they nickname “change roses.” They range in color from white, to blue, to light purple, to dark purple, to pink, to red. White hydrangeas lack color pigment and can’t be manipulated to change their colors. The color of other hydrangeas depends on the presence of aluminum ions in the soil and how the plant absorbs them according to the acidity of the soil.

We are like hydrangeas. What surrounds us that we see, hear, and read changes the focus of our hearts and the direction of our thoughts. Immerse ourselves in negativity, profanity, and impure thoughts and we become soiled like a white garment before flood waters. Proverbs 23:7 says, “As he thinks in his heart, so is he.” Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

The good news about being change roses is that we control the change. We have freedom to decide what we allow to enter through our ears and eyes and what we allow to come out of our mouths. Hydrangeas are static and have no choice but to absorb the soil around their roots and bloom accordingly. We can change our soil by moving: getting up to turn off the TV; refusing to allow negative or toxic people to rent space in our minds; turning a polluted conversation into a clean conversation, going for a walk to remove ourselves from human contamination.