Before digital cameras, if you wanted look at the photos you took at a memorable event, you had to get pictures developed. You were given the negatives, but to see what the captured incident actually looked like in reality, the negatives needed to be inverted. I remember that I always thought the negatives that came with the pictures were so cool. They were on this clear plastic, and they made your face look blue and the sky look red. But they were so tiny that you couldn’t usually figure out what was actually going on.

I believe that, in my own life, I have been conditioned to just look at the negatives. That is, I’ve been taught to be a pessimist, to focus on the bad things and think that they are what matter and what are most important to look at.

And I don’t think it’s just me. There are subtle things in life that encourage us to focus on our blemishes ten times more than on our beauty.

You probably know what it’s like to get a paper handed back in school with red marks all over it. Teachers mark what’s wrong on your paper, not what’s right. It’s not because they don’t appreciate your hard work, it’s because you usually get more right than you get wrong, and it’s faster to mark up whichever one requires less marking. But it’s hard to celebrate your unmarked right answers when the wrong is so colorful.

Consumerism thrives on improvement. Commercials always tell you what you lack, what you could improve on. It’s not like they believe all of their customers are sad and ugly and poor and unfulfilled. But if they told you that you can be beautiful or happy just as you are, they wouldn’t sell anything. The media has to actively tell you what is wrong so that you will participate in the economy.

I think that as a culture, we don’t celebrate enough. The parties we have are usually to get away from our troubles. So even when we do things we think are fun, the catalyst is the negative. You don’t go out and get drunk because you’ll have some great memories. You do it to forget about your problems, which feel like they’re always in front of your face. Wouldn’t it be cool to go to a celebration where things don’t haunt you at the back of your mind, where you’re not just going to fulfill your needs for attention or approval or escape, where you can just be happy because you just know that you have so much to be proud of that God has done in your life and in the lives of the people around you?

We don’t take time to celebrate our right answers and what is right with our health and what we already have because, well, we don’t have to.

But honestly, I think we do.

Even if we have the entire population working to better the world and focusing on all of our problems, we would still have problems, and we would still not be happy. If every person is slaving away trying to make everybody else happy, then everybody will still be depressed slaves and nobody will be happy.

I’m not suggesting that we’ll be happy if we just forget our problems. I’m saying that one of our problems is that we just forget to be happy.

This year, don’t let guilt tow you down this foggy road of “progress.” Instead, fill up on thankfulness, and let Christ’s love and grace compel you. Here is my resolution: Don’t be dragged by guilt; be compelled by love.

If I tell you, “Happy New Year,” I mean it.