Last night, my wife and I went to see the movie Happy Feet. It's an animated feature about a penguin who doesn't know how to sing, but dances instead. This is a problem because it's how penguins communicate, and how they find the one that they're going to create new life with. I've waited 18 months for this movie, and it didn't disappoint me. I laughed, felt the rhythm of the music, and just thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I couldn't find a single thing wrong with this movie, and neither could my wife.

However, while walking out, feeling really good, I heard one young girl say "It wasn't as good as I thought it would be." To which another girl said "You say that about everything; there's just nothing you really like." Then I got home, decided to read some movie reviews, and was shocked to see how some people rated this movie. There were people who hated it because they thought it was too sexual (obviously they'd never seen March of the Penguins), too preachy (there is a minor environmental message in the movie), hated the music (personal choice; personally, it was fine) and thought the storyline was lame (if you think a storyline is going to be lame, why even plunk down your money to begin with?).

To me, if you went to a movie like this and walked out with a negative thought, you didn't want to go in the first place. As I said, I waited 18 months for this movie, without really knowing what it was going to be about; I just knew it looked like something that I'd love. But I'm the type of person, in my adult life that is, who's only ever gone to one movie that I really didn't want to see, and I didn't enjoy it at the time; that movie was E.T., and when I watched it again 10 years later, I absolutely loved it and wondered what the heck was wrong with me the first time. I realized it was that I just didn't want to see it, I'd heard so much about it, so I was already predisposed to not like it.

Some people go into situations with the thought that they're already going to hate something, and most of the time it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. What they unintentionally seek is what they get. And it's a shame, because it shows we waste our time on negatives things, which brings us down, versus positive things, which not only uplifts ourselves, but others.

I walked out of that movie with happy feet and a big smile on my face. Who doesn’t want to feel like that all the time?