Posts Tagged ‘difficulties’

Endurance

No one is brought up in this World and taught that Life is difficult from a young age. Rather we all seem to come to that belief later in Life!  I used to wonder why after about age thirty ,it seemed that  for most people  there was a problematic decline in their level of optimism. Therefore, I vowed at an early age never to lose my child like wonder or become a cranky elderly person. Rather, I wanted to hold onto my  optimistic view, youthful vigor, and appreciation  for the small things.  I’m actually proud to report that I’ve managed thus far to  uphold my youthful promise to myself. It  certainly hasn’t been  of a conscious effort. Rather,  I owe it to my  natural disposition, sub conscious mind, and of all things a near death experience. While I’m admittedly  not thankful for the vast number of physical difficulties(painful ones too)  I have come to realize that there has been an immense strengthening during those stretches of time.  In a way time stopped for me on October 12th, 2012 when I unexpectedly suffered a massive stroke.  After that point, my plans for ages 28 and 29, were taken on an extended detour. I struggled to bridge the gap and  maintain things for awhile, but- as Dylan sings “The times they are a changin,”  and that’s okay. Because  there is good news rolled into the bad news of that reality.  It meant, my suffering(and yours) would not last forever, just as the good times don’t last forever. Although my plight could’ve led to imminent disaster, quite the opposite occurred. I found those cliche’ sayings to ring true. It really is the darkest before the dawn! For me it was a slow dawning to the realization that, in what I once saw as a complete loss, was actually a complete gain! A gain of time rather than the loss of it. A gain of appreciation  for beauty rather than the ignorance of the beauty Life holds.  Most importantly, a  leap in wisdom that usually only old age or tough trials can bring.  I don’t claim to know it all, quite the opposite. -but- I do know that if you look closely at the trials in your own Life, you’ll find  the strength to overcome rather than  be overcome.

    keep pushing

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    I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

    -Thomas A. Edison

     
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    If a little seedling  can manage to grow through cement, why can’t you do the same with your difficult  circumstances? The world worships at the feet of the God of success, but what do we do with failure and catastrophe? Rather than meet these challenges with a smile, We crumble and fade from them. When you’re going through a hard time keep smiling. Make people wonder where  that smile came from, and how it got there. Meet life dancing with your hand in the air rather than lying down. Imagine what you’d do if the floor was pulled out from beneath you, because that’s what happened to me actually! In one fell swoop, I lost my high paying job, my apartment, a significant other, and my left arm and leg were paralyzed. I went to bed expecting to go to work and then home to New York City, but instead woke up in a Hospital back where I started with even less than I had   as a child. In this situation you can either give  up  and fall into the arms of a suicidal depression or   get up  even when you don’t feel like it. Despite my desire to bury myself under the covers in my bed,  I  forced myself  to get up and go to rehab every week. Because, regardless of how I felt, life wasn’t going to hand  progress over to me  I had to push back to achieve it. I can assure you , that if I can  do it, so can you! Just as trout swim miles upstream to spawn, sometimes  we find ourselves swimming upstream as well.  Perhaps  we aren’t swimming upstream to spawn, but  our reasons are not so different from the trouts. That reason is simple,  both of us are swimming towards  Life and not away.

    God speed!

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