Life has a way of throwing us curveballs. On any given day, the sun may be shining and a fresh breeze blows, but the very next day, the breeze could pick up to a violent wind, and out of nowhere the rain pours down. Sometimes we can succumb to the storms in our lives, and we feel that we can never come back from the pain and sadness. The despair has proven to be too much, and life will never be the same. It’s just too hard to keep going.

This doesn’t have to be the case. No, life is not fair. No one has ever claimed it is, and probably no one ever will. But, even when we can’t depend on life or other people as our source of happiness, we DO have the ability to create that for ourselves, despite whatever is raging around us. We have to embrace what life throws at us as a chance to create meaning out of a bad situation, and to learn and grow from what it teaches us. As Akshay Nanavati says in his article How to Escape Despair and Bring Meaning to Your Life “Life is challenging, get used to it and embrace it. There can be joy in challenge if you choose it. As ultramarathoners often say, it doesn’t have to be fun to be fun.” He goes on to say that even if the storms in our lives were brought about by the actions of other people, we have to take 100% responsibility for what is going on in our lives and how we respond to it.

Mr. Nanavati goes further to give suggestions as to how we can create this meaning in our lives amidst whatever we might be going through. Meaning is not inherently part of any situation, good or bad. We need to take a good look at ourselves and our circumstances, and react to it in such a way that we can grow and learn. This creates meaning. We need to learn to love ourselves for who we truly are, and then we can move on to love the people around us. We need to cut any unnecessary negativity out of our lives, and finally “connect our passion to a higher purpose.” We will be blessed twofold if we can use our new-found passion to bless others as well.

Life is crazy, and we never know what’s around the corner. But despite what goes on, what hurts and pain we are experiencing, there is one person who will never give up on us. And that is we ourselves. We have so much strength and resilience, there is no need to give up just because something bad happens. Realizing our own strength is such an exhilarating, thrilling and empowering experience. We have the power to change ourselves, we have the power to get right back up again and keep going.

Works Cited

Nanavati, Akshay. “How to Escape Despair and Bring Meaning to Your Life.”Change Your Life The Change Blog. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2015.