The wit, wisdom, and optimism of President Ronald Regan. President Regan’s favourite story, he narrated the story at least a thousand times during the presidency.

It’s a story about a parent with two sons one was an extreme pessimist and the other was an incurable optimist.

Worried that the boys had developed extreme personalities – one was a total pessimist, the other a total optimist – their parents took them to a psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist thought he could solve the problem.

First, the psychiatrist treated the pessimist. Trying to brighten his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with brand-new toys.

Next, the psychiatrist treated the optimist. Trying to dampen his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with horse manure.

After half an hour, he went back to the first room,

But instead of yelping with delight, the little boy burst into tears. “What’s the matter?” the psychiatrist asked, baffled. “Don’t you want to play with any of the toys?” “Yes,” the little boy bawled, “but if I did I’d only break them.”

He was hoping for a different outcome in the next room

But instead of wrinkling his nose in disgust, the optimist emitted just the yelp of delight the psychiatrist had been hoping to hear from his brother, the pessimist.

Then he clambered to the top of the manure pile.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the psychiatrist asked, “With all this manure,” the little boy replied, beaming,

“There must be a pony in here somewhere!”.

It had a big impact on Regan’s white house staff Whenever something would go wrong, somebody on the staff would be sure to say, ‘There must be a pony in here somewhere.’”

The story is to lift the spirits of millions of people impacted by Microsoft and crowdstrike outages.

That is it for today, see you next time.

You can read my writings at view all blogs.

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