Allergies

Is it possible to find a silver lining in allergies?! In continuing my personal challenge to find positives in everything I encounter, and thus be more grateful for everything in life, I'm certainly going to try.

The most common allergic reaction to anything is sneezing. This could allow you to learn who cares for you when they say "Bless You" or some other similar response.

Let's say you break out in hives. These are quite possibly the worst allergic reaction to anything, in my personal experience. The constant itching anywhere your epidermis exists drives me batty! So, what could possibly be the upside? How about your own personal heater? Hives have this nifty quality in that they tend to generate an enormous amount of heat wherever they are found. This is especially helpful in the winter.

My current optimistic challenge, however, is figuring out how to be grateful for the swollen eye (looks very much like Pink Eye, but it's allergy-induced, NOT caused by bacteria, so it's not the contagious kind). Well, I did manage to get an excessive amount of sleep last night because of it (my body naturally wants extra sleep when something malfunctions so it can try to repair it). A red swollen eye is also an interesting conversation piece. My students were naturally curious about my eye and some of them couldn't stop staring at it. While that was a bit awkward, at least I knew that they were not falling asleep in class or playing on their cell phones. :-)