Silver Lining

Everybody has done something they regret… it’s their Homer Simpson “D’oh” moments… whether it’s a bad decision based on insufficient data, or a bad decision due to a moment of utter stupidity, it still resulted in a moment in your life that you would gladly erase.

Call me naïve, but I believe even bad things happen for a good reason… and you become a better person because of it… I’ve come to realize this only recently (last few years)… I believe in this because of a couple of reasons…

First being the fact that I believe in karma, ie what goes around, comes around. Now, I’m a good person… I may be a bit on the naughty side, but I’m mostly a good guy… so if something bad happens to me, it’s gotta be because it’s actually good for me…

Secondly, I have learned to look at the big picture… now when I say ‘big’, I’m talking about a very long timeline… this is kinda hard to see if you’re still a teenager or even in your early twenties… it’s because you haven’t lived long enough to see the effects of a certain event… now that I’ve crossed over into my thirties, my bad events from 15 years ago now seem like a blessing that led me to ‘better’ things in life now…

An example would be if I had gotten better grades in my pre-uni days… I would have ended up doing my degree in IT instead of physics… I would then not have learned all the amazing things about the way the universe works… and wouldn’t be able to say “trust me, I’m right… I have a degree in physics” (which shuts people up, no matter what the topic was).

Actually, there’s a third reason… but people always say that there are two things you shouldn’t discuss in public… politics and religion. You never know who might be offended…

Anyway, back to clouds with silver linings…

Having this view in life really helps me cope with the challenges that I face everyday, both professionally and personally… it’s not to say that I don’t get stressed out… I’d be lying if I said that nothing fazes me… I go through the normal phases that everybody goes through when something bad happens… shock, sometimes with a little panic thrown in… then regret… it’s just that I add one last part, which is acceptance with a blend of optimism… it doesn’t always come immediately… sometimes taking months or even years… just as long as it’s there…

I’ll leave you all with this quote…

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell