Do we remember to thank others for our hardships?
I know why would we do that? What is the point in thanking people for hardships? Our hardships are the most compressed times of change, growth and personal understanding. When things get rough we can often look to the problem and let the pain of it weigh us down. But if we drop the pain let it fall away we can find more of our selves. The pain blows a hole in our ego, it cracks the shell around us and we can see in. If we do not learn to put the pain aside and look through that crack we waste an opportunity.
It is an opportunity to know our selves, to understand our selves in terms other than the labels we identify ourselves with. If those labels are the wall that protects the core of our being hardships are the wrecking ball. The ball hits us we real back from the impact and then we survey the damage. We look for all the outside effects of the impact the things in our lives that have been thrown out of whack and we try to fix those. We look at the emotional hurt that the hardship has caused us. This is the surface of our wall, the cracks the chips and the breaks in our idea of self and our defenses against the world. We repair these. But too often we do not go deeper; we do not look at what is inside the walls.
Let's think about it another way: Charlie and the chocolate factory. We live in a small shack just outside the walls of the factory but we never get to see inside. Then we get a golden ticket, we have the opportunity to get past the gate and see all the wonders inside but because we are so concerned with our lives on our side of the gate we through the ticket away. The ticket is the hardship that comes in to our life and the wonders inside are deeper understandings of ourselves.
So thank others for the hardship in our lives and use the opportunities that the hardship brings.
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