Bad Times: A Good Teacher

Everyone has had bad times, at some point of time in their lives. Every single person. No exceptions. We despise these times, but truth be told, Bad or tough times teach us more than any school or teacher does. Because during these times we learn things ourselves, with our intuitions, with our understanding of how things really are, from what we experience.

Bad times are Universal; being broke to losing your job or being sad over loss of someone – big or small, unpleasant things never fail to leave us heartbroken. Yet there are a lot of things we learn from these occurrences, knowingly as well as unknowingly. Here’s why bad times are as a matter of fact good times in disguise:

• SELF-EXPLORATION – When we are happy, satisfied and fulfilled with our lives, we wouldn’t bother trying to uncover our potential; we would just let it be. But when things don’t go our way, we go and we explore more about ourselves, what we love, what we actually want to do, how much abilities we have and that per se is the kick start to the life we are destined to live. It is a turning point as, ‘when a man has lost everything, he doesn’t fear anymore’.

• SINCERE ALLY –We only understand how much we mean to someone, when we need them. The people, who genuinely care for you will always be there, even during the worst days of your life, they will stand by your side when you need them and love you even more. As Mustafa Alam said, ‘Some people will only love you as much as they can use you, their loyalty ends when the benefits stop’

• PAITIENCE – No one likes waiting. We all want to get what we want immediately.Being patient is not easy; because we want things to change. We want to stop feeling miserable and want to be happy again. But these hard times teach us to be more tolerant of others as well as of ourselves. As A. Milne said, “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”

• EMBRACING LIFE – We learn how to take life as it comes. We don’t question everything, as we are not in a position to question, so we accept things in a positive manner. When we accept the fact that something bad happened we get over it partly and half the work is done already, we try to amend it, we try to change it for good, and these are the times which help us to try more as we just go with it. As Rasheed Ogunlaru said, “There are ultimately two choices in life: to fight it or to embrace it. If you fight it you will lose – if you embrace it you become one with it and you’ll be lived.”

• BEING HUMBLE – we live in a place where people encourage competition. With all that going on in our surroundings, it won’t be a bed of roses to be humble. No matter how perfect a person may seem, he has some limitations, sometimes we just can’t notice them. How does bad time make us humble? We realize that we fell short over something and we may as well ask for help from people. And that makes us a great human being. As Shahrukh Khan said, “Success is not a good teacher, failure makes you humble.”

So let’s not only get educated but also learn.

As Martin Lurther King said, “We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.” What is means is that accepting disappointment can help take the sting out of it, even when it seems like it’s the worst thing that could ever happen to you. However, just because you’re disappointed and hurting right now, you must save a bit of your emotions to keep hope alive. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself giving up and that’s no good at all.

(Author may be reached at oorjakaria@gmail.com)