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Today's
Meditation:
I've
faced an awful lot of adversity in my life, and there's a
part of me that wishes that I hadn't had to do so.
There's another part of me, though, that recognizes that I
learned a lot from the adversity that I faced, and that I
wouldn't be the person I am today if I hadn't had to go
through the things I went through. I wouldn't say
that the adversity itself was good for me-- I still carry
significant remnants of the negative effects it had on
me-- but I do feel fortunate that I was able to find ways
to work through it and rise above it.
On a
community scale, adversity can work much the same
way. It can pull people together as they try to help
one another work through things like war, natural
disasters, financial crises, and the like.
Communities often band together when bad things happen--
many articles have been written about just how
kind and considerate Americans were to each other after
the attacks of 9/11-- and people often treat each other
much better than they normally do.
Sometimes,
though, when adversity strikes our first and strongest
response is despair, a feeling of denial or anger.
When something bad happens to us, we think that it's not
fair. Why me? And we get so caught up in our
negative responses that we don't allow ourselves to rise
to face the adversity. Instead, we let the adversity
get the best of us, and we give up without ever using the
strength we've been given. I know many victims of
alcoholic parents who become alcoholics themselves, and
many victims of abuse who become abusers themselves.
They play the victim game instead of refusing to become a
victim.
Adversity
will come into your life in many different forms.
Since we can't force it out of our lives, the best things
we can do is to accept it, let it in, and then do our best
to deal with it and learn from it. Allow it to bring
forth our strengths, and adversity will turn into a
positive part of our lives instead of something that
destroys our lives. It may harm us, but in the
healing we will find more to ourselves than we knew was
there.
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