Have you ever thought that lots of bad stuff was happening to you all at once? I’ve had many conversations with friends who have the same perception as I sometimes do: why is all this bad stuff happening all at once?!
It is interesting that I rarely verbalize the opposite: why is all this good stuff happening all at once? If you’re like me, you tend to take the smooth highway for granted, but the potholes on the backroads of life quickly get your attention.
Philosophers and theologians have debated why bad stuff happens to good people for years (usually we figure “bad people” deserve the bad stuff but luckily we don’t think ourselves in that category). I have seen less debate on why good stuff happens to good people, although we do get perturbed when seemingly rotten people seem to be enjoying great luck.
We talk about “dumb luck” but lately I’ve become interested in what I’ve come to call “informed misfortune.” You can do everything right and still have stuff turn out wrong. Lots of us followed what we thought was sane, sensible and prudent advice about how to invest our savings, yet the market demonstrated that even the informed can get hammered by a downturn regardless of the advice they’ve followed (and a few can do it all wrong and still somehow get it right). You can be a terrific employee, but if they close your office, it doesn’t seem to count for much. And as I’ve mentioned before, I know some terrific parents who had kids that didn’t turn out, well, too terrific.
Our senses are acute during the difficult seasons of life, so the suffering seems more intense, undeserved and clumped together than the times when we’re enjoying peace and prosperity. My dear and departed friend Charlie Jones used to remind me that everyone’s life is cyclic, and that downturns are inevitable. That is hard to remember when you’re doing well, but comforting to know in times of challenge.
Different seasons bring different blessing and challenges. Even the weather is more predictable than the timing and duration of the seasons of life. It is hard to remember that the difficult seasons offer as much or more opportunity for introspection and growth than do the good times.
It is important to remember that regardless of whatever season you are currently in, this too shall pass. It is the nature of seasons…
A person could say their entire life could have been one continuous “do everything right,
and things still turn out wrong” theme. I kind of fell under that theory. But ultimately, its your attitude and how you handle what happens to you. It took me 30 years to figure
that out and turn it around.
Mark Sanborn was good as ever @ Maximum Impact Simulcast. He dipped into his book
The Encore Effect for content during his presentation. When I went to MIS, I just had Mark on the radar, but was treated to an entire day of great speakers. Hope to attend next year.
I’ve been thinking more and more that what constitutes ‘bad things’ must be evaluated against a better definition of ‘bad’. For example, to my four year old, not getting to sit in her seat of preference could constitute a real tragedy, something very very bad. And I mean that in her little mind, she can’t possibly imagine anything worse. As an adult, I have a much larger perspective to know that’s a little silly. My seven year old has a better perspective than my four year old on such things but again, his view of ‘bad’ is still subject to his own limited life experiences. Now let’s move on to ME. Certainly I’m subject to the same limitations and biases. I must presume that even the worst of human experiences such as neglect, abuse, murder, etc. are still able to be viewed from a much larger perspective than my own and may not be so bad after all, if indeed I could see the entire picture
As a Christian, I believe the complete and perfect view is God’s and one that is based in a context of eternity. For those who do not share my worldview, it seems reasonable that one might still conclude that our own perspectives are indeed very limited and often unable to comprehend a complete perspective on the ‘bad things’ that come our way.