A poem of encouragement that will remind us to focus on the good of life! Be encouraged and inspired by this poem.
In his book, Laugh It Off, Strickland Gillilan wrote this introduction before the poem Face The Sunshine:
I write not to bring you gloom.
You don't want me to. Nobody wants
gloom at all — that is, no sane person.
Especially does no person in his right mind
want gloom badly enough to send for it or
ask some one to put it into a book.
Beside that, hardly anybody anywhere
needs to step outside real life or to open a
book, to get plenty of gloom. Home talent
can always supply the demand.
And there is no community, no matter how
blest with cheerfulness it may seem to the
casual observer, but has its own particular
human gloom spigot. All that is necessary,
should gloom be desired, is to go and turn
him on and let him squirt. The only difficulty
is in shutting him off when you have all of
his product you can endure.
But even if you had wanted me to write
gloomy stuff, I should have balked on you.
I hate the stuff so ; I wouldn't be caught dead
in a ditch with it.
If it did anybody any good, I should act
differently about it. Much as I hate it, I
should unselfishly lay aside my own personal
prejudice and go handing it out with one
hand while I held my nose with the other.
But it does no good.
It only does harm.
So we will.
Face the sunshine — let the shadows lie behind you;
Face the sunshine from life's dawning to its night;
Face the sunshine, though at first its brightness blind you —
Face the sunshine! Keep the shadows out of sight.
Face the sunshine — let its beams your smiling brighten;
Face the sunshine — let its rays suffuse your soul;
Face the sunshine — let its warmth your pleasure heighten;
Face the sunshine and be quit of grief and dole.
Face the sunshine — let its sweet caress remind you
Of the brightness we should scatter through the years;
Face the sunshine — let the shadows fall behind you,
And the sunshine will put rainbows in your tears!
