Normally, I’m a “glass-is-half-empty” kind of girl, while my boyfriend is the eternal optimist. A meteor could land on Chris truck and he’d simply shrug it off. He had wanted a new car anyway. My car was keyed in a parking lot once and I was pissed off for a day. He could be on Highway 50 behind some moron driving 30 mph and not blink an eye. If I were in the same situation, I’d probably have a heart attack.

It’s hard enough for me, at times, to not allow his Pollyanna attitude to annoy me, let alone for me to understand it. But weirdly enough, after spending a huge chunk of my winter vacation with such an optimist, I’m starting to see things in a different light.

At first recollection, my break seems like it could have been a National Lampoon movie. For a week after my wisdom teeth were removed, I lived with chipmunk cheeks and a Vicodin haze. Just when I could finally eat solid foods again, my very small, but very germ-infested cousin gave me the worst case of the flu known to man. Two days later, as others celebrated the new year, Chris and I embarked on a long awaited cruise vacation with my 102-degree fever and an arsenal of Kleenex.

Later, while everyone else was headed to the pool for cocktails and sunbathing, I was on my way to the room for some medicine. These rather cramped living quarters would provide the scenery for the majority of the trip. I endured “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” close to a million times; where was Blockbuster when I needed it? When I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I was seasick on the second night and even had to leave dinner to throw up.

Meanwhile, all I kept thinking was that Chris must have been miserable. He’s always in a good mood, but I knew underneath it all he must be wishing I hadn’t have come.

On the last night of the cruise, we returned to our room around 1 a.m.–definitely an improvement from my earlier bedtimes. As we lay in bed, I asked him if he had a good time. His response was yes.

I was shocked. Did we go on the same trip? I asked if he was just trying to be nice. He told me that even though we hadn’t been partying till 4 a.m. and running around the ship during the day, he still enjoyed the time we spent together. He pointed out that we did hang out by the pool, and that despite my illness, we rode through a jungle on all-terrain vehicles, visited a piano bar and attended a comedy show. And even though we were confined to our room as I battled flu, we spent that time together.

He was right, of course — we did manage to have a little fun. And it could have been worse.

The old cliche that every cloud has a silver lining is something my mother told me, but it may still have a little application — even in my pessimistic view of everyday life. University admissions are being cut, our fees have increased by over 40 percent, prices for books are outrageous, parking sucks and jobs after graduation are hard to come by. But new faces will always arrive in the fall, buy their books, find a parking spot and find a way to break in to the workforce. Someday our own children might even go to our alma mater.

It’s sometimes hard to see the positivity in a world of global warming, cancer and identity theft. But by concentrating on the bad, you could miss out on something good. We can all learn something from the optimist: looking at the negative in life is the easy way out. Sometimes it takes a little courage and good faith to see what’s on the bright side.