THOUGHTS: The Good Through The Bad

Most of our lives we are told, when something bad happens, typical cliches that encourage us to believe that when the hardships end, the good times begin again. It's a tried and true belief, time honored, where we aren't necessarily absolved from responibility or hard work to fix it, but we are simply inspired to hope that, eventually, our loads will lighten, and our freedoms will prevail.

A smaller segment of the population believe something I've only recently found a glimpse of myself. They believe that the hope and joy of eventuality actually manifests itself during the bad experience. Many different belief structures and thought processes have spoken to this conclusion, but, too often and like many other learned disciplines, it's not something we really understand until we have the one truly bad experience and realize, through faith or simple rationalization, that things just aren't as dramatically terrible as they seem.

My own personal epiphone happened in my very recent life, where my wife and I, experiencing a uniquely challenging adversity, decided to take steps back into our own psyches and repair our own damage. To the outside world, and even to ourselves at some points, it seems like all hope is lost, like our family is irreparably shattered, that out son will grow up angry at having a broken home. The illumination that my wife and I both had independently is that we're doing this to save our relationship, to foster love and nuturing in each other and our son, to chase the dreams that we've had alone for far longer than we even knew of the other's existence. It makes us excited! Happy! Motivated! Calm. Considerate. Caring. Loving.

The good doesn't come after the bad. It comes along side it, quietly sitting in the shadow waiting to be noticed, and confidently protecting you when you acknowledge that it's there. All you have to do is posess the courage to see it, and the weight of your burdeons will be cast off.

See the beauty that is every day life, and look for it when you can't see it. It's there waiting for you.