My Good Time Stories

It was once said that the difference between a mountain and a molehill is perspective…and it is so tue!

Two hikers reached a mountain peak just as the sun was setting. One sighed, complaining about the aching climb and how small the world below looked after all the effort. The other stood quietly, eyes wide, whispering how vast and beautiful everything seemed from above. Same mountain, same view—yet each carried home a different memory.

Everyone learns something new for every experience they perform. Whether it be good or bad, our perspective on the things that happen to us can greatly differ. While some people may look at a certain experience as something as something negative, another person may look at the same experience as a learning opportunity…a lesson of what not to do again for example.

The following little testimony is from a once prominent person from Hollywood that gives us a terrific example of how important it is to have a positive and healthy outlook in some situations that may seem bad.

“For years, I lived in a van with my family…

But in my mind, I was already a star.” 

Because poverty can empty your pockets — but never your imagination.

My dad was a musician who gave up his dream for a “safe” job.

They fired him anyway.

And just like that, everything collapsed.

We lost our home…

and ended up living in a Volkswagen van, parked in lots and open fields.

I was 15 and already knew what it meant to see my mom sick…

and my dad broken.

Sometimes, all we had to survive the day… was laughter. 

I started working as a janitor at a factory,

all the while dreaming of making the world laugh.

The road was brutal.

Audition after audition, they said I was “too weird.”

I battled anxiety, depression.

But I kept writing, kept practicing in front of the mirror, kept believing.

One day, I wrote myself a fake check for $10 million and kept it in my wallet.

A promise to myself.

Years later, I got paid exactly that for the movie “Dumb and Dumber”. 

The hardest part? Losing my dad just as my dreams were coming true.

He was my biggest fan — the one who drove me to every show when no one else would.

But he left me with a lesson I’ll carry forever:

Don’t give up on what you love just because you’re scared to fail.

Even the “safe” path can collapse beneath your feet. 

Laughter saved me…

But pain was my teacher.

Because sometimes, the people who make us laugh the hardest…

are the ones who’ve cried the most in silence. 

— Jim Carrey

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