While browsing through our community’s Facebook page, a picture of a two-decker bright red bus grabbed my attention.

Most intriguing of all was the message painted on the bus in huge letters: “All aboard the positivity bus.”

The posting seemed to indicate the big red bus would be at an upcoming car show and meet-and-greet event for two candidates running for our homeowner’s association board of directors.

The posting said the event would take place at our local golf club. I live only a few blocks away from there and I walk around the course every single morning. I never saw a big red bus there and I sure couldn’t miss something as eye-grabbing as that.

I thought perhaps the bus was just coming to our community for the special car show. While I wasn’t planning to go to the show, I decided to be there because I wanted to see the positivity bus and learned more about it.

To gain a bit of background around the bus I Googled big red positivity bus but found nothing. No one I talked with had ever seen the bus.

A woman named Linda was the one who posted the message. While I never met her, I reached out to her on Facebook to ask about the bus.

The laugh was on me. It’s a virtual bus, not a real bus.

Linda created the clever graphic to call attention to the meet-and-greet event for the two candidates. She called it the positivity bus because the two men have made positivity the central part of their campaign.

Believe me, their emphasis on staying positive is a much-needed breath of fresh air for what’s going on in our community.

I won’t bore you with details, but let’s just say it’s been nasty.

So that big red positivity bus is greatly needed even though it’s a virtual bus.

Few would deny many of us are drowning in a sea of negativity.

Joyce Myers stresses to her viewers we cannot have a positive life and a negative mind. They cannot coexist. One brings despair; the other brings wondrous potential.

Self-help author Jon Gordon illustrates this by telling an interesting fable that’s a takeoff from a well-known Indian fable about two wolves.

His fable says we all have two dogs insides us. One dog is positive in outlook, loving, kind and gentle.

The other dog is angry, mean-spirited and negative. The two dogs battle each other for dominance.

“Which one will win?” the wise man is asked.

“The one you feed,” he answers.

To help us feed the positive dog inside us, Gordon wrote the book, “The Energy Bus.”

It’s a small book with a big purpose: To help us improve our lives by focusing on positivity.

“The more you focus on positive energy, the more it becomes a natural state,” he says.

It’s written as if you, the reader, are taking a bus trip with a most helpful driver.

Citing the need to be enthusiastic in your personal life as well as at work, he makes the point humans can sense enthusiasm, even from a distance. It’s what makes people want to be on your bus.

But not everyone should be allowed on your bus, he cautions. “Some negative people are toxic energy vampires, draining your own energy away. Don’t let them on your bus.”

Negative energy is a thief that can cripple your marriage, your job and your joy.

Positivity, on the other hand, can draw people to us, improving our outlook. That, in turn, can improve many areas of our life, he says.

Behavioral scientists tell us we each have a little voice inside our head that influences our thoughts and actions.

If we believe we can do something, we can. If our inner voice tells us we can’t succeed at something, we can’t.

It all has to do with positive thinking.

Robert Fulghum puts it this way: Don’t believe everything you think. That thought often has saved me from jumping to wrong conclusions.

If we think negatively about ourselves, it’s harder to have others think well of us. It helps to have a positive person in your life to help you focus on ending negative thinking.

Sometimes we can be that positive person who encourages others.

I am definitely a positive thinker, even in these devastating times. While the pandemic has eliminated much of what brings me joy, I get up each morning thinking something good will happen that day. If it doesn’t, I get up the next day thinking something good will happen.

I found the very act of looking for positivity improves my day.

I guess I’m like the person who keeps digging through manure looking for the horse.

While Gordon acknowledges we can’t control events in our life we can control how we respond to those events.

His book is similar to Robert Fulghum’s classic, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Both present simple truths told in a simple way. Both can be transforming.

My dear friend Dr. Louis Sportelli is fond of saying we are the same today as we were yesterday except for two things: The people we meet and the books we read.

I’m going to stay on the positivity bus.

Want to ride along with me?

Contact Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.net.