Thank you for honoring President Reagan with this thread, Mike.
Ronald Reagan is who made me realize that optimism is the key to success and happiness. I grew up in the 60's in a Military family and I saw first hand how my closest family members were treated after the Vietnam War, I remember all too well the failure of John F. Kennedy in the Bay of Pigs, and then his assassination. I saw how LBJ manhandled the Vietnam War, the race riots after MLK was assassinated, Robert Kennedy's assassination, the resignation of Richard Nixon, the short and controversial term of Gerald Ford, and then the utterly clueless 4 years of Jimmy Carter.
After all of that, I had little faith in the people who were supposed to leading us. But then along came Ronald Reagan to the rescue, I rescued me from my pessimism, and showed me that what makes a person a happy & successful person, is not how someone deals with the things that goes right in our lives, It's how we deal with the things that go wrong in life.
Reagan's optimism was contagious, and as the advertisement says..... "It was Morning in America again"
God Bless You Ronald Reagan, the Shining City on the Hill that you spoke of often, awaits you in Heaven.
I rescued me from my pessimism, = he rescued me from my pessimism,