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Up, Down, In, Out, Front, Back

In one of the “Oh God” movie trilogy films, starring the late, great George Burns, God tried to explain why bad things might happen to good people. His explanation to a little girl (Tracy), who had asked God why he let pain and suffering happen to innocent people, was, that in situations there has to be a set of opposites. He stated that you can’t have ups without downs. You can’t have ins without outs, or fronts without backs. He went on to say that you can’t have tops without bottoms, or pleasures without pains, or happiness without sadness, or joy without disappointment, or life without death. In other words, you can’t have good without bad.

There are times in our lives when we lose sight of these thoughts and the realization that life is not just the positive, but we have to deal with some negative too. Hopefully, the positive will outweigh the negative by a large margin. Maybe at times, we might just break even, and if the bad outweighs the good in some circumstances, hopefully we’ll have the courage to survive it and accept it as best we can.

Much (most? all?) of life is, in reality, a fifty-fifty proposition. In most situations we’ll win or lose, succeed or fail, get what we want or not get what we want. We’ll reach a goal, or not reach a goal. We’ll enjoy things at times and not enjoy things other times. Sometimes, in a restaurant we’ll order something that will taste good, and sometimes it might not taste so good. In some of the things we work for or strive to win, the road might be smooth, other times it might be riddled with potholes, or have a combination of both. And maybe too, sometimes we’ll encounter a trail of “bad luck,” and “hit a slump” with regard to winning, achieving, getting what we want, or making the right decision. I remember some sage words of wisdom from my parents when we felt the sky was falling on us, “This too shall pass.” Sometimes, it needed our hard work and dedication to make it pass, but most often it did pass.

If some choose to play a sport or engage in some sort of competition, we could be subject to people and factors that may have some influence on the final outcome of a game or competition. This might be intentional, though realistically, and most often, it’ll be unintentional, (but we might not be willing to admit that part.) We may have to answer to coaches, referees, umpires, or judges, and sometimes we won’t agree with what someone else decides, calls, or determines during contests or competitions. We may play or not play that day, or may strike out, get penalized in football or soccer, foul out of a basketball game, or be cited for violations in a debate and/or a writing contest. We may have had our rendition of a song or dance misunderstood, or maybe our entree in the cooking contest wasn’t received well by one of the judges who may have tasted it and maybe not particularly liked it. Sometimes the outcomes will be good, but sometimes they might be not so good. The key is what we do afterward, in BOTH cases.

If anyone chooses to run in any type of election (school, local, state, national), there’s a 50-50 chance they’ll win or lose. If we cheer for a certain college or professional sports’ team, there’s a 50-50 chance they could win or lose every time they compete. If we ask someone out on a date, or ask them to marry us, there’s a 50-50 chance the answer might be either yes or no.

Again, the key, in most of these situations, is how we choose to react to them. Sometimes life can be emotionally painful. Loss of loved ones is devastating under any circumstances, but after our grief, we are asked to move forward in the hopes we will see our loved one again if we believe in an eternal life. In other situations though, are we going to want there to be only ups, ins, fronts, tops, pleasure, happiness, joy, and good, or are we willing to accept the downs, outs, backs, bottoms, pain, sadness, disappointment, and bad if it comes our way? Are we willing to use the things we perceive as negatives as learning tools to try and do all we can to maybe help us make the changes necessary to possibly have better success next time? Are we going to feel sorry for ourselves or blame someone else for the downs, outs, bottoms, backs, the bad, the pains, the disappointments, the sadness, and/or the losses? Are we going to look at ourselves when we encounter those situations we may perceive as “negatives” in our lives and see what we did to contribute to them instead of pointing fingers at others and blaming them for whatever outcome may have upset us?

We strive to reach goals in life. We all want to make the team. We all want to play every minute/every game. We all want the job we’ve applied for. We all want the promotion. We all want to win games, elections, or competitions. But what happens if we might not make the team, or get the desired playing time, or get the job, the promotion, or win? Will we look at ourselves and see what we could’ve done to give ourselves a better chance? Are we willing to make changes, work harder, and try again? Will we blame others for not getting what we wanted? Will we claim we were cheated by someone who didn’t like us and used that against us, or will we accept the decision and reset our sights and directions toward eventually achieving our goal or one similar to it?

A generation of people who were raised being taught that you can’t get something for nothing, that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, that if you want something, you get it the old-fashioned way, you EARN it, have become the generation of retired seniors living out their (our) years watching a newer generation of individuals, many who are members of the “everyone makes the team,” or “everyone gets a trophy” generation, where the philosophy of that generation’s beliefs might be an outgrowth of the word entitlement.

It’s said that the only guarantees in life are death and taxes. You’d be hard pressed to argue with that, but I think we can add good and bad to that list. Life is full of a lot of good, some bad too. If we strive to experience more good than bad in our lives, then we’ve admitted that some (but not all) of the power of achievement might be within our control, and that the “bad” in our lives should make us appreciate the “good” that much more. We still need to realize that other factors will always play into life, and life’s situations. Some of those factors are out of our control, and rather than use self-pity, or blame someone else, maybe we just need to accept that “stuff happens.” Sometimes that stuff will be good, and sometimes it might be bad, but accepting either, or both, might allow us to better understand and accept the balance of life, and see the path in front of us as we work toward goals, being able to visually catch the potholes before we hit them more often than not, but also realizing that hitting one of those holes can be a positive encounter if we use it to learn from and motivate us to make the changes necessary to try again.

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