This is the way things are. I have discovered this through a series of events in my life. And a whole period in my life, actually.

All the gurus, self-help book writers, smart people and yogis are right, positive thinking is good. It’s very important to think positive thoughts if you want positive things to happen to you. And I agree with the statement that all things are created twice, first in your mind, then in reality. That’s why your toughts count, and it’s important to think about and visualise what you want to happen in your reality.

But sometimes this stuff doesn’t work. That’s a fact too. At least that’s what I have experienced. Sometimes, no matter how much you think constructively about the things you want to see happen in your life, it doesn’t. Sometimes stuff doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s like the world is against you.

That’s what my life has been like for the past year. It’s actually sucked big time. Not that good things haven’t happened (like going to Kenya). But in general, I’ve felt like a word in poem that doesn’t rhyme with any of the others. I’ve been struggling to move on in a direction I want, but I’ve been swimming upstream somehow.

And that’s the way it is. I’m not fighting it, sometimes it happens. Sometimes things suck. Sometimes it doesn’t help to think positive thoughts. I’m sure this will happen to you too sometime. So my advice to you, when that happens, is: just take it as it comes. Let the feelings come as they are, and don’t always try to fight them and change them into something “good”.

When times like these come along, it helps me to think of what Kahlil Gibran wrote in The Prophet, about joy and sorrow… that the cup that holds your joy is burned in the oven of your sorrow. Or as I understand it, the more sorrow and darkness we experience during our down-times, the more joy and brightness we can contain, when that time comes.

Here is the full chapter, from The Prophet.

Joy and Sorrow

Then a woman said, “Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.” And he answered:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.