For those of you who don’t already know, a few years ago I decided to drop pre-med and double major in journalism and psychology at The University of Alabama. In the hopes of one day acquiring a dream job both traveling and writing for National Geographic, I set myself up for a series of journalism classes the following fall. Though I’ve only been in college journalism courses for a few years, I’ve already come to one very clear conclusion in terms of today’s mass media and news I hope many of you may relate to.

Rarely do we get good news.

I’m not talking about the way information is broadcasted or how we become informed, but rather the exact content our broadcasters are forced to put out to the public on a daily notice.

Morning news, evening news, twitter feeds, facebook timelines, everything at our fingertips.

I pick up the newspaper or scroll through the “top” news on yahoo, and what do I get?

“How Instagram can tell if you’re depressed,” “Nick Thomas dies while attempting English channel crossing,” “Hillary Clinton is in ill health? That’s sick.”

I mean guys…

come on.

Not only this, but it seems as though our days are defined by either how hot it is outside or the chance of rain, who didn’t text us back, how the cashier at the grocery store didn’t ring everything up correctly, or the food at dinner took forever to arrive.

Every day we are surrounded by these negativities, and though many may claim they are simply “negativities of the world,” unavoidable and without reason, I dare to argue it is the exact opposite.

These are negativities we create ourselves. Negativities we choose to experience. Pity we choose to have.

I’m not trying to accuse. To be completely honest, I feel like I could be writing this to myself. I’ve found myself at ten or eleven in the morning, late for class, coffee spilled on my shirt, dropping my bagel on the library steps, already thinking to myself, “today is not going to be my day.” I’ve found myself tired of putting on a good face, tired of the constant “it’s all part of the plan,” “it happened for a reason.”

Truth is, it’s an epidemic we have all encountered, maybe more often than not.

It seems as though we also carry around a lot of negative weight from days, months, or even years of the past. If there’s one thing I have learned from college outside of class, it’s that every individual has their own story. They have grudges, or struggles, or regrets they have been carrying around much too long.

This constant flow of negative social and mass media, combined with the weight we carry around from past experiences leads to one dangerous combination that ultimately, if we’re being honest, can usually lead to a series of bad days, months, or maybe even years.

Reading this you might be thinking about that one person that hurt you, the one job you wish you could’ve scored, the money you wish you made, the person you wish you dated, the places you wish you could be, or the things you wish you could do. We wish so much and hurt so much, and, on top of this, let the smallest negativities brought on by the day ruin our entire outlook on who we are, how far we have come, and what potential we hold.

Here’s the thing guys—

It’s okay to be upset every now and then. After all, pain demands to be felt for a time. Naturally, our bodies release the toxins of our mind and body through tears or anger.

But what really matters, is the choice we make after.

The choice that defines us.

I’m not here to suggest, or recommend, but I’m here to tell you

choose joy.

Don’t just choose life, but choose living. Choose laughing, choose stepping into the current, and just going along for the ride.

Stop wishing over what could’ve been in the past, or what could be in the future,

stop wishing and start existing.

We have been given unbelievably stunning sunsets to chase in the evenings, and mountaintop views to climb for on a Saturday morning. We are gifted with chocolate chip cookies from the oven on a rainy afternoon, dancing to Frank Sinatra Christmas music on the record player, driving into a big city at night to see the stars of the skyline. We’ve been blessed with a child’s first steps and the tossing of graduation caps in the air. We can fall in love and find lifetime friends. We have fresh peaches from a nearby farmer’s market, porch swings, and discounted post-holiday candy. Wintery cabins and summer shorelines, tulips in spring and fall leaves.

Hell, we even have KFC mac & cheese.

Yall, we have so much to choose joy for.

This world has such unimaginable beauty and love and delight and it is just downright incredible that we get to be here experiencing it all.

There is a lot to fix in today’s society, a lot of brokenness in our world, but I firmly believe the first step towards any kind of true healing is a healthy mind.

I loved the words spoken to me by a friend while backpacking the Appalachian trail this summer—

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

We do this by making one defining choice when the morning news arrives or the hot coffee spills over on our way to work, when our heart is broken, or some kind of regret sets in,

we can choose joy.

we can choose laughter.

we can choose living.

After all,

it’s the choice that defines us.