The Journey

Don't confuse your path with your destination. Just because it's stormy now doesn't mean you aren't headed for sunshine. –Unknown

Greetings folks! Sometimes writing these weekly posts can be difficult, but most times not so much. One reason is that I draw inspiration from wherever it may come. It may be a line from a song, a scene from a movie, or a conversation with a friend or a stranger, and most times it’s my life. The most recent place I drew inspiration from was Twitter. I was on Twitter and saw a classmate and friend of mine post something I found to be very profound. His tweet read “Don’t confuse your path with your destination. Just because it’s stormy now doesn’t mean you aren’t headed for sunshine”-Unknown via @Humble83. This quote got me to thinking about my own situation.

Lately, I’ve been sharing with you my journey to the light. However, recently, I’ve been going through a dark patch in the journey. I’ve been sharing to relieve tension and stress and to hopefully help someone, somewhere, who may be going through the same or similar circumstances. I learned a long time ago that our struggles aren’t just about us. Yes, we are the feature characters in these scenes of life and we experience them to achieve personal growth, but we also experience them so that we may help others. We can never help a friend deal with the pain of losing a loved one if we’ve never felt that pain. How can we help someone deal with the anguish of losing a job and the subsequent financial insecurity, if we ourselves have never experienced them? We can’t. And what good is it to go through the ups and downs of life if there is no lesson to be learned and none to be shared?

The view outside my window hasn’t been particularly great lately. It’s been cloudy, with thunderstorms and lightning all around me and no fair weather in sight. When you look outside and all you see are clouds in either direction it’s tough to imagine that the sun will ever show its face again. However, we know that eventually the rain will stop and the sun will come out again. This is the faith and fervor that we use to maintain hope that the picnic that got rained out today may be held tomorrow. This same faith and fervor should be applied to our daily lives because everything happens for a reason.

The journey to happiness and the light at the end of the tunnel is filled with dark shadows, tunnels, thunderstorms and supernatural occurrences beyond our control. But, just because we can’t see the sun today doesn’t mean we won’t be able to see the sun tomorrow. Just the other day I was getting down on myself because things weren’t moving quite as fast I would have liked or as smoothly as I planned. Because things weren’t going my way and it was dark outside I lost sight of the constant that just as sure as the sun will set every day, it will rise every day too. I realized that I began to accept the stormy skies as my destination rather than see them as a patch of bad weather on the journey to sunshine.

Dark clouds will come, the rains will come and sometimes we will get wet. We can either go get a raincoat, an umbrella and continue the journey or walk along the path getting drenched. We can play in the rain and take it for what it is or sit inside and sulk. The choice is ours. I choose to grab my umbrella and enjoy the ride as much as possible, knowing that eventually it’ll all be over and that I’ll be better because of it.

I know that despite my decision to be optimistic and accepting of life’s bad weather things will not be easy. Just because you accept the inevitability of a hurricane or a tornado doesn’t mean that you have to be happy about it. It just means that you plan for the worse, hope for the best and if/when disaster does occur, you pick up the pieces and keep it moving. So here’s to choosing to keep moving on this journey, accepting that it won’t be easy and being resolved to reach my destination no matter what. What will you choose? Until next time, Stay Up and Be Blessed!