There is a lesson to learn from misfortunes

By Michael Oriedo

The weather is chilly this morning after it rained heavily last night. You hum a beautiful tune to cheer you up while getting ready to leave home for your place of work.

Soon, you hurry to the bus stop. Save for few traffic snarl-ups, it is a safe journey to your destination. You alight from the vehicle upbeat and looking forward to having a prosperous day.

However, as you delicately skip over pools of water on the road, a matatu driver rushing to pick passengers hits a pothole and splashes dirty water all over.

The water soaks your immaculate clothes. Perturbed, you join fellow pedestrians in cursing the driver.

"This man has spoilt my day," you angrily swear.

"I had not expected to start my day like this," a fellow who was also splashed retorts as he tries to clean mud from his clothes. He thereafter spews a string of expletives and walks away.

Menacing frown

Similarly, you wear a menacing frown as you walk to your workplace expecting nothing but gloom. Every day, bad things happen to us however much we try to avoid them.

When they occur, as they always will, they shape how our day, week or, sometimes, the month will turn out.

Many of us succumb to them. They make us angry, scowl, rant, keep to ourselves or pick fights easily with other people.

And as we do this, we endlessly question ourselves why bad things happen to us. Unfortunately, we do not find satisfying answers to our predicament. This makes us even angrier.

If not checked, the rage can turn out to be very costly. In most cases, it makes us ruin relationships that we have taken years to build.

It isolates us from other people and keeps us in bondage. It hinders us from working to our optimum and makes us harbour ill will against others.

While this is the natural way to react, it is not a way to untangle ourselves from rage.

When bad things happen, it is important that we accept that they have happened and identify the best way to progress.

You do not have to like what has happened, but accept it, recover and make the best out of the bad situation as you hope for the best. Sulking or blaming others and yourself exacerbates your plight.

Maintain a positive attitude and feel right. Begin by overcoming feelings of anger and blame that arise when awful things happen.

You can do this by thinking of interventions that you can use to correct the anomaly. For instance, when you hit a stone and hurt your toe, think of how you will stop the bleeding.

But do not sit down and start blaming yourself or the stone and looking for ways to uproot it before you treat yourself. Such antics are in vain and they would not make you feel any better.

Cheer up as you reach out to people close to you to help you deal with your predicament. The positive attitude you have, despite your dilemma, will make your friends more willing to join hands with you. In you, they will see vigour and optimism but not doom.

Avoid being victim

Then as your friends help you, ask yourself how you can avoid becoming a victim next time. This will help you to take the misfortune as a blessing in disguise. Misfortunes do not occur to punish us and add misery to our lives.

They happen so that we can have a better understanding of things, learn from them and be wiser. Sometimes they help us change the courses of our lives for the best. Therefore, when terrible things happen, let us take them as learning opportunities.

More importantly, we do not need to allow them to dampen our spirits. Free yourself from unnecessary stress particularly if the thing is as small as a water splash from a mindless driver. Brighten up. Bounce back and focus on what is ahead.

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