( Warning! This is a long read).
Appreciating the woes of life.
Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared and success achieved.- Hellen Keller.
'Cause what if Your blessings come
through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through
tears?
And what if a thousand sleepless
nights
Are what it takes to know You're near?
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst
This world can't satisfy?
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise?
Laura story
The chorus is of a song known as ' Blessings' in an album under the same.
(Behind this song, or rather this chorus, is a story of unsparingly harsh agony that hit, Laura Story, a top ranking gospel singer, really hard. Her husband got diagnosed with a brain tumor, barely 2 years into their marriage. I suggest you read it once again and pore over it while keenly listening to the voice in the song.)
I ask myself quite often ' why does life suck so bad?' Or rather 'why me?' And it leaves me in doubts, fears and tears. More than occasionally, when things go wrong and nothing seems to work out,I become a conscientious grumbler. Sometimes I become so bitter and cry so angrily because you know life can get so so unfair. Losing a loved one, getting robbed or suffering a notoriously painful stomach ulcer are not exactly gleeful things that happen. Such are woes that tear me apart and even more unfortunately life is full of them. Yea for all of us.
At one instance, I remember, covering myself in a blanket in my bed and sobbing all night. This was my lowest moment in high school. I was going through an exceptionally difficult time and nobody seemed to care. It was an emotional pain eerily laced with physical torture. I had numerous batches of different tablets to take to relief a pain that was eating me up like a cancer. Now ratchet it up with insanely low exam results ,as intelligent and smart as I was, tumbling down to the bottom of the class,and there you know I was a morose sufferer going through a grinding depression and the aching of life. And it made me cry.
Life's full of hard times, dark times and up-and-down times not just for the poor but for the rich, not just for losers but for the winners. Pain and loss is an experience we all share but most of the time we don't get the reason why it has to happen. We don't know it's intended purpose in our lives.We barely perceive the healing that tears bring. What we don't understand is that, it is good sometimes life sucks. We are not specimens of torture. That's not what we are. We are learners and life, the teacher.
“Suffering, I was beginning to think, was essential to a good life, and as inextricable from
such a life as bliss. It’s a great enhancer....For happiness. Each time I encountered suffering, I believed that I grew, and further
defined my capacities – not just my physical ones, but my interior ones as well, for
contentment, friendship, or any other human experience.”
― Lance Armstrong, Every Second Counts
The best things that ever happen.
Sometimes the bad things that happen in our lives put us directly to the best things that will ever happen to us- Anonymous
You have heard it many times people appreciate ' that was the best thing that ever happened to me' Or you have heard a guy tell his sweetheart:' you are the best thing that ever happened to me.' It's a common phrase in conversations ranging from petty to amorous dialogues. Our tribulations can turn out to be 'the best things that ever happened' as well. Obviously, it's never all romantic to stand between a rock and a hard place. You know it's awful to fail in exams, to get fired, to get sick or to be heartbroken but this things can come off as great inspiration that can change our lives completely. It may not seem a blessing as such,so immediately, and it doesn't come so easily, but in the long run it happens,frustrations and tribulations are great opportunities.
Here is one amazing story of an amazing achievement by an amazing trailblazer:
Let me briefly introduce you to the late legendary Steve Jobs, well recognized as a computing prodigy. Before his passing away, our hero was the CEO and the founder of a lucrative business, the Apple company.( We won't delve so much into his life except to extract life lessons that are relevant in this context). It.may be interesting to know Jobs was a college dropout. He quite college to follow his heart, and it was a daring thing to do. During his commencement speech at Stanford he narrated,
"It wasn't all romantic.( That is,after the dropout)
I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy
food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. "
Unprecedented as it was, dropping out of school and sleeping on floors in friends' rooms made all the difference in his life.He founded Apple.
Yet still, an incabula of tragedy was brewing. Jobs was later fired from his own company by the co-managers who ran the business with him. It was both insane and downright devastating. After a few months imbued with emotional pain, humiliation and self loathing, he decided to start over again- to create a new beginning. (By the way, Jobs came to acknowledge that this few months of anguish were his most creative moments. We will look at the link between adversity and creativity soon afterwards). Five years later he started two prolific and lucrative companies which he named Next and Pixar.
"I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me."
My revered reader, our challenges, achings, misfortunes, disappointments, are sometimes, or can always be, the best things that ever happen in our lives. But it doesn't come automatically. It just doesn't come that way. That's why we should learn to fight without giving up and anticipate without flinching and without loosing hope. Just as for Steve, your hardships can turn out to be ' the best things that ever happen.'
The Great Chicago fire of 1871 was ' a calamity without parallel in the world history' according to Chicago Tribute. Lasting for more than a day, that is from Sunday to Tuesday, the fire razed down the wealth the town had accumulated for 30 years. It was a big blow to all the people of the city of Chicago .Since it destroyed much of the city's. central business district,It was particularly a huge misfortune to the merchants whose stores were brought down to ashes incurring terribly immense losses. Field Marshall was among them. But the whole of this accident came to bless him. He later bult a towering store which now stands as the second tallest store in the world. If it were not the fire,its very likely, and almost certainly the magnificent store, a landmark building, could not be existing anywhere in the world.
Adversity gives you a story to tell.
Tell me, which biographies are engrossing and interesting to read? Definitely. Those of persons who have had a tough life full of scary, backbreaking challenges and occasional victories. To people, such as an inventor who fails thousands of times before his or her innovation,or a freedom fighter who lives behind bars most of his life, nothing in life comes easy. Life stories of self-made victors who succeed against terrible odds, are compelling and truly encouraging. As Theodore Roosevelt will put it:
"Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering."
Adversity, in all its guises it turns out, is the compelling force behind extraordinary action. It is the motivation that backs the achievement of highly accomplished individuals. Behind every successful man lies a narrative of pain and struggle. These folks momentarily meet obstacles, which most of the time, are stiff and painfully demoralizing but the inspiration that drives them to lofty heights of accomplishment is sourced from these very encounters.
Benjamin Carson.
John Milton.
Benjamin Franklin.
Carl Brashear.
And many others.
These great names have gone down into history, not because of power or sheer luck, but because of their life stories, and by extension, the stiff odds that gnawed at them. Amazing achievers have had their most outstanding attainment during and after their darkest hour in the chambers of sorrow. To them frustrations and heartaches,become the turning points in their lives. There are numerous stories of highly accomplished persons, in history few of which have been told in this book. These biographies reassert this idea that I'm trying to put across.
Clearly, it appears hardship-or rather the overcoming of hardship- plays a major role in the success of trailblazers of every stripe.So don't freak out. Don't fret. Your anguish might be what it takes to drive the wheel to success. Only take advantage of unpromising circumstance. Turn around the obstacles and 'make lemonade when life offers you lemons.'
Misfortunes and the heartaches of this life can bring the best in people, and conversely the worst. Pain changes people for better or for worse. It can change a fledging, naive person to a strong and courageous person. And on the other end of the spectrum,a devout and pious Christian to a smoking meathead. Such is the power and potentiality of meeting challenges. It can make or break, build or destroy. Let's dwell on positive tendencies for this time.
Having grown up in streets, adults who grew up there would not like anyone to go through the same fate. It's because, they can feel it. They know how bad it feels, so they fight to bring sanity to street children. Hardship inspires compassion. Each disease teaches the value of of leading a healthy lifestyle. Heartbreaks teach the value of faithfulness and understanding.Being broke teaches the value of economy and frugality. Death teaches the value of life. Failure teaches the value of discretion and hard work. Each mistake has a lesson. Each heartache has an essence. Each punishment is a correction. Each pain has a mission to accomplish. Each aching is a moment of self-discovery and an opportunity for reconstruction.That's why our trials and tears are all important to us.
As we struggle against odds or get chastened in the spiritual realm, our relationship with almighty is deepened. Every time we pray for help, when in trouble,we see his power made more manifest and we soon learn to hide behind His cross. Fire burns the dross away and leaves us with finer attributes of godliness in the body and in the soul. These problems are the mallet in God's hand to shape us to maturity and righteousness. As thus it is written," my brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into diverse temptations."- The Holy Bible.
I read this comment beneath a blog and found it so inspiring. It goes "you are right about hardship with the right attitude it can really make something magnificent. I fought cancer twice growing up and it has often been a source of courage and understanding as I've come to reflect on my own writing. However some people don't understand the benefits of hardship and allow it to destroy them personally."
The tragic formula to success.
Why is pain such an inspiration to success?
You have to get out of your comfort zones and struggle in order to beat the odds. Take the case of a poor person, he/she is spurred to create wealth, almost solely, to stave off hunger and below-average living conditions. He/she can put immense effort and sacrifice than it's possible if he/she we snuggling up in a comfort zone. Many people lose hope on the way, but it's these tragedies that usually drive people insane. It drives them to take big chances and push beyond their elastic limits. Except for severe cases, challenges of life be truly a great gift.
Adversity and creativity.
"It is a fact well observed that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion who can't read or write well under other circumstances" - Ralph Waldo Emerson.
First in the list put Steve Jobs whom we have discussed already- some minutes earlier. After getting sacked from Apple, a company which he founded, and facing the hell of life he got 'freed to enter one of the most creative periods of his life." He started two other companies and later got back to Apple because it happened they could not do without him.
An epic illustration of all time, of the creative power of tragedy is Edgar Allan Poe, famous poet and writer and a big and popular name in the American literature. This is a review of his tragic biography:
“Tragedy visited him early and often, [and] did nothing to thicken an already abnormally thin skin.” He loved and lost an endless string of women, beginning with his mother, who died when he was 2. The love of his adolescent life — an older woman, the mother of a schoolmate — “died insane” when he was 15.....An unsurprisingly macabre teen, Poe spent much of his time at her grave." TIME magazine, a 1934 issue.
When finally Poe decided to get married his fiancee got engaged to someone else while he went to school at the University of Virginia. He eventually got married at age 27 to a thirteen year old cousin who unfortunately suffered tuberculosis and breathed her last.
Clearly, Poe was followed by heart-crushing grief and much heartbreak. Such was the life of a sensational writer whose publications including. novel 'The Raven' become a sizzling menu that America was ever served. His biographers credit his magnificence to the eerie accidents of life that he experienced.
John Milton wrote his famous poem 'paradise lost' when he was blind.
Ludwig Van Beethoven composed while he was deaf.
We know of course, not all that are crushed by grief or misfortune end up becoming writers or achievers of any stripe. Some allow adversity to break them-not make them. Since, success depends on improvement of opportunity, and misery is that opportunity, these people who allow odds to crush them are doomed by their own decisions to become losers. It all depends on how you get to look at it. Set backs to many people become stumbling blocks but, to a rare class of people such as the one reading this book,they become stepping stones and amazing enhancers that mould people in every respect.
The choice is yours.
OTHER VOICES.
We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly
disguised as impossible situations.
- Charles R. Swindoll ...
Every calamity is a spur and a valuable hint.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson-
This is the night that makes me or breaks me.
-William Shakespeare-
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes
taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
-Anne Bradstreet-
Every heartache,every failure, carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit.
- Napoleon Hill-
When life gives you lemons, make
lemonade"
