Learning

Very few remember these two old aphorisms:
1. "Circumstances are the creation of man. Man is not a creature of circumstances."
2. "Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
We learn to live life with the help of experiences. What we learn from experiences are the lessons with which we live our lives.
For most part of my life I, like most people, tried very hard to have as many good experiences as possible and tried harder to make sure that I have no bad experiences. The harder I tried to run away from these bad experiences I felt that I started experiencing them more. One day I stopped myself and asked, "What is so good about these bad experiences that they keep coming back in my life? Surely there must be some reason why God puts me through a lot of struggle!"
I thought about this for many days. The answer finally came when I was about to go to sleep one night.
The answer was, "When I'm going through a good experience, is there anything else I think about other than just feeling happy? No. I'm just happy, I don't think about anything else............ When I'm going through a bad experience, is there anything else I think about other than feeling sad or disappointed or depressed?........Yes..........I have a lot of questions as to why things went wrong or what did I do wrong or should I have done it some other way.....and more questions like that."
"When I ask questions to myself I learn. So when I ask so many questions when things go wrong or I am having a bad experience, I am learning. I am learning how to be better next time. I am learning about how I did things wrong this time. I am learning about my way of thinking. I am learning how not to experience failure. I am learning more about myself."
"When I learn so many things from a bad experience, how can it be "bad"? It is actually good!"
So if you ask me whether a bad experience can change someone's life; I say, "Of course it does."
Whether the experience makes the person strong or weak depends on the person.
If we LEARN and not just feel bad about going through a bad experience, we make our lives better. Isn't that what we ultimately want?