How do you respond to tough times?

One day, when her daughter came running to her complaining of a rough time at the office, the mother responded with a unique experiment. She placed a carrot and an egg in boiling water. After a while, the egg had hardened while the carrot had softened. Turning to her daughter, the mother said, the egg went in soft and fragile but the boiling water had hardened the surface while cooking the inside to perfection. The carrot went in hard but the boiling water had softened its contents. How do you respond to your hard times, asked the mother.

A diamond gets to go through the fire before it acquires its sparkle. The finest steel is made in the hottest refinery. It is the tough times in our lives that shape us, mould us and make us who we are. The tough times refine us in the fire, forms our character and turn us into experienced wiser folk.

When we go through the tough times, the trying circumstances, it is easy to feel disheartened. That’s the fight or flight instinct at work. We shun difficult times and if given a chance, would want to experience only the good things in life. But when we look back, we always find that the tough times have mellowed us, have made us into better, more mature individuals who would like to think over decisions, mull over life changing issues before making a commitment.

Older generations

The trouble is we live in an instant noodle culture where unlike in the olden days, we are constantly encouraged to get into the instant habit. We drink instant coffee, eat instantly prepared meals and expect results instantly. Young couples making a commitment in matrimony often do not know that a marriage takes work – a good marriage is created with a lot of work over a period of time. Their expectation of a marriage is all too often based on self-gratification and doing things as a couple that makes you feel good. When the ride gets tough, they usually want out because sticking together and working out the tough issues is far too much work.

Be brave when facing difficult times

The young were born into a culture of instant gratification - I remember seeing this e mail which said “Respect your parents - they did their homework without the Internet and Google!” . True enough. As children, we did not have the Internet, the X Box, on line games or sixty channel Cable TV to keep us occupied. We went out to play with the neighbourhood kids and we did not need Kinect to help us get up from the chairs and play around, as I constantly remind my son. When we faced tough times in school, we did not always resort to evoking our rights as students. We faced it and learned something from it.

All of that has changed today. Everything is too easy and available at the click of a button. No wonder the children do not have the desire or the opportunity to go through tough times, allowing their character to be formed, their lives to be richer by the experience. In ding so, they miss out the whole experience. The older generations were given the space by their parents to g through the mill – there was plenty of time for opinions to change and maturity to be acquired.

Bad news

We need to teach our children the value of learning that fire burns. How else to learn it except to feel its heat and sometimes, become too close to realizing if you touch it , you will be burnt. We ourselves need to face our tough times with conviction and the ability to overcome. We need to see the light at the end of the tunnel and not the darkness of the tunnel.

The easiest thing to do when you go through a difficult time is to sit there and wallow in it. Nothing kills the soul like self-pity. The dignity to rise above it, made richer, mature by the experience, is what is needed and what is difficult for some to achieve.

People face bad news everyday. In fact, it seems so enlarged because media highlights every bad thing that can happen. News is full of the bad news – no one gets to hear the good news. We need to rise above the negativity and focus on the good things. One needs to train one’s mind to see the beyond.

We must ask ourselves when we go through a rough patch, what is the lesson here for us. What has a bad experience taught us - in which way has the incident affected us and how can we learn to do things better next time around. Or has it made us wiser than we were before.

Everything in life has a meaning. We just need to get up, pay attention and discover it.