masterwordsmith-unplugged

I have yet to meet a person who has had a wonderful life from start to the present. I am sure many of us can testify to the fact that our lives have been a series of ups and downs - sometimes we go through valley experiences and feel so alone while there are unforgettable times when we have mountain top experiences. It is a fallacy to think that just because we do good in life, all things will work out in our own lives. I used to ask God why bad things happen to good people who more than often have shorter life spans. In fact, a few years ago, when I was going through a very bad patch in my life, I bought a book with that very title - WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE?" For the record, I never read it even after I bought it. I guess I realized that heck, no one owes us anything, especially God. Often times, we may feel we deserve to get this and that because we did A B and C and then we are thrown off balance when we encounter a hiccup in our lives.

I still remember the first few words of M. Scott Peck's "The Road Less Travelled". I think it goes something like "Life is difficult. The sooner you realize this, the easier it becomes." As I am in my late 40's, I have come to terms with the fact that life is sometimes unfair and that there are many unpredictable and inconsistent or incongruent things which may happen to us and what matters is not the injustice that occurs but rather, how we handle it, the lessons we learn from these valley low experiences and also for us to appreciate life more. Tell me, how can we appreciate rain if we did not go through drought...or to appreciate our loved ones if we had not lost someone dear to us before? At the same time, all these experiences, good and bad, help us to learn and to understand more about ourselves. I can still remember how I could not hear clearly for a few days due to a serious ear infection. Deeply affected by the pain and the inconveniences, I am always grateful for the gift of hearing, sight and all the little things in life that we so often take for granted.

I guess many of us can vouch that we went through many difficult times, crossed many hurdles before we achieved success in many areas of our lives and those trials made us more resilient and better able to encourage those who went through similar circumstances. I guess it is all up to us to convert challenges into championship trophies. Then the older we grow, the more we realize that we are not so different from one another because there are many others who share similar problems albeit at different magnitudes.

But if we do not realize that, then we could spend the rest of our lives griping over how no one else has got it that bad except ...Worse still, we could be blaming others for our problems instead of taking responsibility for our predicaments. If one resigns oneself to negativism, one may go into deep depression, be reluctant to overcome the problem, host many 'pity parties' and at the end of the day, be stuck in that rut almost forever! Sometimes, we have to recognize that pain is necessary for growth but misery is not necessary. We have a choice - to be miserable or to be at peace with ourselves once we take the right perspective to our lives. In that way, we are likely to be growing to be better, stronger and more mature.

Therefore, I believe we all have to put in a little effort to look for that silver lining in each dark cloud and to learn to change what we can and to accept what we cannot change, especially where our spouses are concerned. It is so easy to fight with our spouses and complain and gripe ( I did that for the first few years of my marriage!)but it is better albeit more difficult to use that same energy in changing ourselves and not our spouses! I guess we have to be fair to ourselves, to those whom we love and to realize that even if life seems unfair to us, we have to be fair to ourselves and to love ourselves by not going down that road of self-condemnation or complaints or criticism. The bad days will pass....when we learn to appreciate what we have and to concentrate less on what we don't have. Life is not that unfair...sometimes, we could be the ones being unfair...to ourselves, to others or even to God. It's all up to us to make the right decisions and to be carried by the right emotions...I should know. I have made enough mistakes to be able to write this post!!

Take care and have a great and wonderful day in your beautiful life!