via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>The most telling of them all was 10 years ago when a friend died.\u00a0 A big loss for many of my friends, a massive loss for a few of them.\u00a0 It was sad and horrible and shocking and depressing.\u00a0 What happened as a direct consequence of that loss is actually perhaps the most important thing to happen to me yet.\u00a0 A friend of the one who died, and a friend of mine as well, had moved away to another state several years beforehand.\u00a0 He came back to our little town for a couple weeks so that he could attend the funeral.<\/p>\n10 years later and we have three children together. That would not have happened if our friend hadn\u2019t died, leading him to visit us all and deciding to move back down here permanently.<\/p>\n
Silver linings of this calibre are horrible things in their own way.\u00a0 This a pretty big consequence of something horrible that happened, if that horrible thing hadn\u2019t happened, I wouldn\u2019t have my 3 kids.\u00a0 So, I could wish that the person had not died \u2013 but I recognise that I am in some way, not glad, but grateful perhaps, that they did.\u00a0 And isn\u2019t that a horrible thing?<\/p>\n
Silver linings, sometimes quite evil things.<\/p>\n
A few years ago my parents and I had a big fight and the consequence of that is that I didn\u2019t see them or speak to them for over a year \u2013 except the occasional text with my dad on birthdays and such, and random non-personal chat on Facebook with my mum. There may have been a silver lining in all that, I am not sure though.\u00a0 No it\u2019s what happened next that had a silver lining.\u00a0 My dad died before I could see him again, but as result of his death my mum and I made up and are again quite close.<\/p>\n
This is a not so big silver lining, because in this one \u2013 and she would agree I think \u2013 I would prefer to still be at odds with both of my parents, if only they were both here to be at odds with.\u00a0 Still, I am not ungrateful for the silver lining that is there.<\/p>\n
Silver linings, sometimes I can take them or leave them.<\/p>\n
Last week I was mowing the lawn, but my mind wasn\u2019t really on what I was doing, it was elsewhere.\u00a0 I stopped to empty the catcher and I did my usual thing, drag my hand across the back of the mower where the catcher clips in, to get rid of the build-up of cut grass clogging the back.\u00a0 And then I full on shoved my whole right hand into the mower itself, while it was still running.\u00a0 I am fine, thankfully.\u00a0 A blade hit my right index finger only, it immediately swelled up and bruised and is still quite stiff and painful a week later \u2013 making it especially hard to type all of this by the way.<\/p>\n
You might think the silver lining here is that I didn\u2019t lose or break my finger, but that\u2019s not it at all.\u00a0 I had no risk of losing my finger before this happened, so no it\u2019s not really a silver lining \u2013 just something to be grateful for.\u00a0 The silver lining in this story is quite simple \u2013 I now have a story to tell people and make them laugh at my absolute stupidity.\u00a0 Because really, what kind of idiot shoves their hand inside a running lawn mower?\u00a0 This kind of idiot, that\u2019s who!<\/p>\n
Silver linings, I can\u2019t even with you right now!<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the point of this post? No point really, I was just thinking about silver linings and found the contrast between these three things to be quite interesting.\u00a0 A silver lining that is so big that you can\u2019t conceive of the horrible thing never happening.\u00a0 A silver lining that doesn\u2019t make up for what happened, but is still a good thing itself.\u00a0 And a silver lining that is just crazy, but still amusing.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know that every bad thing that happens will also have a silver lining \u2013 though going by my first story, it\u2019s possible that everything has a silver lining for at least one of the people experiencing the bad thing.\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 All I know is that all those bad things that happen to people at least have the possibility to create something good.\u00a0 The trick is seeing what the good thing is and then accepting it for what it is \u2013 even if it isn\u2019t quite good enough to make up for the bad.<\/p>\n
And it makes me wonder, are there bad things that have happened to me that have created amazing things for other people? Maybe there wasn\u2019t a big massive silver lining for me, but maybe there was for someone else.\u00a0 And that\u2019s an interesting idea really.<\/p>\n
Although, what anyone is going to get out of me sticking my hand in a mower, other than a few laughs, is beyond me.\u00a0 But maybe someone reading this really needs a good laugh at something stupid, and so it maybe does matter.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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