The Importance of Imagining Brighter Days

Mitch Arnold • March 2, 2025

Nebraskans experienced what seemed like an entire winter in two weeks last month. Those, like me, who have been around for decades of Nebraska winters recognize that winter can be much harsher and last a lot longer, but for those two weeks, winter misery prevailed.



Then, it suddenly changed. In just a few days, we went from sub-zero overnight temperatures to temperatures in the sixties. Many areas experienced 70-plus temperature changes from one week to the next. The change was remarkable, and it not only melted the snow and ice, it also quickly erased our memories of the misery we felt just days before.


Life is often like that. We can get so bogged down in difficult times that we can’t even imagine brighter days. Then, when brighter days happen, our memories mercifully tamp out the misery. The challenge is to resist unhappiness and frustration during trying times, and to remind ourselves that brighter days are ahead. It’s an exercise in hope, and one that’s crucial to our happiness, especially when things are not working out the way that we want them to.


Amid the miserable weather of those two weeks, while the snow and ice kept me homebound, I slipped and fell when getting out of the shower. That left me with a diagonal slash across my back, sprained finger and deep bruising on my right hip and foot. Fortunately, no emergency room visit was needed this time, and I was able to continue on with my day and week, albeit much sorer and slower than usual. The worst of the injuries happened to my already weak right side, and resulted in that leg being much tighter than it normally is, which made getting around even more challenging than it already was.


As always, I don’t share these challenges looking for sympathy. Rather, I want to acknowledge the occasional suffering that happens behind the scenes for all of us. Most of us try to put on a brave face and keep our problems behind closed doors, but everyone endures tough times at one time or another. It’s during those times that we need to find hope and optimism, and the best way to find hope and optimism is to focus on brighter days ahead.


Like the weather, our fortunes can quickly change. I focused on that as ice and injury kept me homebound. I’ve been injured before and stuck at home by weather before, but rarely at the same time. In fact, the timing was quite convenient. Since the weather was already keeping me in, I could use that time to heal. Admittedly, those days were not without frustration and sadness, but I fought off those feelings with hope and optimism.


Hope and optimism are almost always more elusive during difficult times, when we need them the most. That’s why we must make a concerted effort to summon them. If we don’t, we risk unnecessarily prolonging misery.


As the weather improved, so did my body, like it had hundreds of times before. Before long, I was back doing the things I normally do, and my confidence level inched forward, as I proved to myself that I could survive another challenge and the brighter days I imagined came to be.


If you are going through a difficult time, remind yourself that tough times never last, and that brighter days are ahead. If you do that enough, it becomes a defense mechanism that you can refine and use each time your days darken.

People Think We Shouldn’t Be Friends

By Mitch Arnold • February 15, 2026
Most of my closest friendships go back decades, and they are with people who are a lot like me. Because we grew up in similar environments and share similar backgrounds, my friends and I also share fairly consistent perspectives on the world and current issues. If we differ, it’s usually only slightly. Vernon was a notable exception. Vernon came from a much different background than I, and that made his perspective unique and valuable to me. Despite our differences, we learned over the decades that we had more in common than we could have imagined. I met Vernon in the late 1990s, when I was working in public relations at a historically black university (HBCU), North Carolina A&T State University. He was 15 years older than me, and a consummate professional, not to mention, a snappy dresser. He was always in a suit, and took his work in research administration very seriously. Initially, he intimidated me and I amused him. Not many people on campus looked like me. Fewer came from a background like mine. As a white guy who grew up in the rural Midwest and whose previous job was teaching at a Catholic school in Nebraska, I was very much a minority. Additionally, I was a Republican, and there weren’t many of those around either. I thought of Vernon during the noise surrounding this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. If we still worked down the hallway from each other, one of us surely would have stopped by the other’s office to share perspectives and try to make sense of the controversy. That conversation would have ended, like they all did, with some good-natured humor and a laugh. Decades have passed since Vernon and I worked together. In that time, I moved back to Nebraska and Vernon eventually retired. Still, we kept in touch with phone calls at least once per year. “It’s your white Republican friend from Nebraska” is how those calls usually started. He would follow by asking me again where Nebraska is, and what I thought of the current political landscape. Though clearly incongruent politically, never did we argue or take up sides against each offer. Mostly what we learned from each other is that we weren’t all that different and that often what we assumed wasn’t always the case. Vernon was very much a capitalist and more socially conservative than most Republicans, including me. Jokingly, I once accused him of being a Republican, because a lot of what he said didn’t fit my narrative of a Democrat. Likewise, he was surprised when I told him that I wasn’t a fervent supporter of President Trump. “You’re a unique man,” he said. I told him that I really wasn’t. Like most people on both sides, I valued many of the things he did, like strong family values and a strong economy. We just differed on the role that government should play on those issues. In one particularly poignant exchange, Vernon said, “People would look at us and think that we shouldn’t be friends.” Initially, his comment made me sad; however, I stepped back and thought about it further. In a world that seems intent on separating and categorizing people, it’s important that we remain friends and prioritize our similarities over our differences. I would have enjoyed a conversation with Vernon about the Super Bowl Halftime Show controversy, and imagine that he would have told me that he didn’t watch either show, but I didn’t get that opportunity. Vernon passed away in his sleep last spring. Even though he’s gone, his voice will never leave me. When I see efforts to divide our great nation into sides, I’ll always think of Vernon and strive to have friendships like the one I had with him, even when people think that we shouldn’t be friends. 

Prioritizing Memories

By Mitch Arnold • December 6, 2025
I lost two uncles in twelve days last month, the second passing away hours after we buried his younger brother. Neither death was particularly surprising, as they were 79 and 84, and struggling with their health. Still, even though we sensed that the end was near, the suddenness with which it occurred was jarring. Most of don’t spend much time thinking about the end – not just the end of our lives, but of the lives around us – and that’s probably a good thing. What isn’t good is thinking we have unlimited time, and wasting the days we have with each other. Though we shouldn’t dwell in morbidity, we also shouldn’t squander opportunities to make memories with those who are important to us. Just a few short months ago, Lynda and I made a trip to Ord to see my now deceased uncles . With travel, that effort consumed most of a Saturday, but it was one of the best Saturdays I’ve had in a while. I enjoyed it so much that, as we drove back, I told Lynda that we should plan to do it again next summer. Unfortunately, there won’t be a next trip to see those two. That’s a sad fact, but I’m thankful for the memories we made on that trip, memories that will stick with me for the rest of my life, and I’m thankful that I didn’t put off the trip. Daily life often gets in the way of living life. We fill our days with have-tos and need-tos, often running at a frenzied pace that clouds the beauty around us, but how much of that do we really have to or need to do? How much will matter when we look back on our years? Coincidentally, when I returned from the first funeral, my 24-year-old daughter showed me a plastic bag of my childhood memories that she had uncovered while looking for something else. In the bag were things that I had stashed away because they were important to me at that time in my life. A lot of the memorabilia was related to various family vacations we took in the early 1980s. Back then, if you wanted to capture a memory, you could take a picture with an old camera, hope that you got it right and wait until you got the pictures back from a developer or you could buy a 20-cent postcard and grab some free brochures. I did a lot of the latter, and had loaded that bag with brochures and postcards from places like Reptile Gardens and Wall Drug in South Dakota. Also in the bag were trading cards from movies and television programs like Grease, The Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas, and obscure sports cards with no market value. While I enjoyed a few minutes of flipping through stuff I hadn’t seen in decades, it mostly just obscured more meaningful memories. Among the clutter were autographs I had collected from my sports idols, postcards a friend sent to me with notes from her travels, a letter that another friend wrote to me while undergoing treatment for leukemia and a prayer card from his funeral just a few months later. On the lighter side, I had stashed away a citation awarded to me by a Loup City policeman in recognition of my efforts with an ill-advised fireworks display on the last day of my eighth-grade year! My daughter particularly enjoyed that one. As I browsed through the contents of the bag, I created three piles on my desk: definitely keep, maybe keep and probably throw away. I also thought about how I would feel if I were to go through the bag in my golden years, which are getting closer every year. If the important things were still obscured by the junk, would I just throw the whole thing away without even looking for those treasures? That motivated me to focus on what will always matter – memories tied to people. Sadly, I hadn’t visited Ord for years, but last week, I made my third trip of the year there to celebrate my uncle’s life, like I had just a couple of weeks earlier for his younger brother’s funeral. While the last two trips were for somber occasions, I’m glad that I didn’t skip the first one. I had other things to do that Saturday, but nothing more important than making memories with loved ones. photo above, July 2025: my dad Harold on the left, his oldest brother Roger (middle), and next oldest brother Don (right)