the good thing about great pain

There are moments in life when all is right in the world. When you feel like it just doesn't get much better than this. Moments that come when we least expect them. Great moments. 

If we're lucky, we'll have more than a handful of them in our lifetime. 

But did you ever think that it's the bad times, the hard times, that make these great moments great? It's funny, you know, if you think about it. But then again, that's life. Full of ups and downs. 

We have to take the good with the bad, or rather the bad with the good as I like to think of it. 

We can guard our hearts and live timidly in an effort to avoid great pain, but that's also a surefire way to avoid great happiness. Or we can live passionately and feel deeply, risking great pain but finding even greater joy.

I've heard it said that there is no hate without love. Like in order to hate someone, you have to care.  Well, isn't there also no happiness without sorrow then? Like we wouldn't know what happiness was unless we had felt sorrow. We would just be living these monotonous lives, emotionally flatlined. 

The Oh Hello's put it well in one of my favorite songs, "Cold is the Night":

"Without the bad, the good disappears." 

We're not guaranteed much in this life. We're not guaranteed it will be easy. We're pretty much guaranteed that it won't be. But one thing we are guaranteed...

We're guaranteed that life will go on. It's like that song the Weepies sing, "The World Spins Madly On." The world will keep turning. The sun will set on today. Tomorrow will come.

the sun setting behind bel air presbyterian church

So whether you are experiencing a great moment or a moment of great pain, recognize it. Appreciate it. Embrace it. After all, we wouldn't have one without the other. And wouldn't we rather have both than neither?