Highs and lows

No man can escape the weight of suffering. Every man witnesses this at some point in his life. Whether through chronic depression, the death of a loved one, failure in studies, prolonged sadness, existential crises, a breakdown in love or friendship, separation, arguments, harassment , in short, we are naturally confronted with fatal situations that we wish to avoid. But suffering spares no one, it is a carefree palace that takes us to the dark confines of the world, into bottomless abysses where it is believed that no sun can free us from this accursed imprisonment. But it happens that this abyss of stone transforms into an abyss of diamonds, by some miracle, because life is steeped in small unnoticed miracles.

Living can therefore be both a burden and a blessing. Sometimes we are invaded by an intoxicating and euphoric happiness, we feel that we are at the top of an idyllic world, we feel that the world belongs to us, as if we were fairies in a fantastic tale. We are in the midst of voluptuous moments, close to sensual people who warm our little hearts, on the verge of epicurean happiness, in a heavenly room where the air is intoxicating. We are invaded by an almost tragic greed.

Other times it happens that the frameworks crumble, a truth that exists against our will, and that life is cruel to us, that it takes on the face of a burden and that things happen there that are not up to our standards and which break the kingdom that we have built for so long. We are then engulfed in a bottomless abyss and at the end of which there is no light. We feel empty of emotions. We don’t get out of bed anymore. It is difficult to perform the smallest tasks, such as washing your face or brushing your teeth. We feel detached from reality. We have trouble keeping up with our lessons. We wonder what is happening, why, we do not understand each other and therefore we do not know how to explain it to others. We ask ourselves a lot of questions that have no answer. This time, we are in a tedious-looking cold room. Without exception, we all go through these moments.

It’s because life is a drastic mix of ups and downs. Without the ups and downs, life has no meaning. The truth is that the world is like the waves, like the pounding of the sea, like a roller coaster, there will always be lows that are there to give meaning to those highs, the fusion of the two is essential for make sense of things.

Where would be the beauty of the sea if the waves had the same beats, if they all had the same rhythm? Where would be the splendor of the melodies if we did not alternate the white and black keys while playing the piano? Besides, can man live without the beating of his heart exerting ups and downs? Can the rainbow appear in the world without the rain and the storm having ravaged the heavens? Without death, would we be so attached to life? Without war, who would want peace? Without man being imprisoned, how can he desire freedom? It is when he is imprisoned that he understands the value of his freedom.

Without the idea of ​​hell, will heaven retain the same value? Isn’t it by the existence of hell that paradise is precisely a paradise? Don’t we need to fail first to enjoy success, to start working hard? Isn’t it through depression that we begin to desire happiness, that we recognize its value?

Life is therefore a set of paradoxes. Sometimes euphoric, sometimes miserable. This world as it is is naturally made up of love, but also of broken love, of laughter and floods of tears, of memories and nightmares, of selfish people but also of generous people, of rain and sun, sunsets but also sunrises, storms and rainbows, separations and reunions, springs and winters, flowers and thorns, but the thorn devours the implacable beauty of the flower? Especially not.

So these stockings must not prevent our happiness, as thorns and brambles do not prevent the flower from beautifying a garden, just as the rain does not prevent the flowering of spring; on the contrary, it is essential for plants. And since the existence of selfish people does not exclude the possibility that there are good-hearted people, failure does not eliminate success, but on the contrary it is a part of success. A breakup of love does not imply that you will never find your soul mate and so on. In this way, the downs are a necessary part of the ups and they don’t exclude happiness. Without the night, there is no rising sun; we therefore need black for light to exist and have a value; it is necessary to exalt both the ugliness and the beauty of the world, to sing of victory and failure, to dance under the stars in the dark night but also under the light of the sumptuous sun.

Perhaps we will find happiness if we accept these ups and downs in life, if we understand that as human beings we are all going to walk through a dark tunnel filled with trials and sorrows which forge us and build us, and that we must keep the hope that there will always be a light at the end of this tunnel. Maybe we can find happiness in the way we choose to face these moments, these ups and downs, in the hope we plant in our garden, in the smile we make , but especially in the perception that we keep. One should not aspire to an ideal happiness or a perfect life. This is not possible. No one spends their life on top of a mountain, there comes a time or another when a volcano erupts. The idea of ​​a world where men are perfectly happy is therefore illusory, all men go through difficult times, suffering is inevitable. We can therefore choose to believe, in a world where there is far too much grief, that evil is essential in our life to give meaning to good, but that nothing is eternal, all situations are temporary, so what matters , is that there will always be a second chance, every day is a new opportunity to be seized, and if the sunset equates to the finitude of something, then know that all finitude is only a beginning and that even the darkest night will end in dawn, at sunrise, in a new beginning, a new departure, and that at each sunrise a world of its own can be composed.

Can we then access happiness in a world of ups and downs? And should we surrender to the weight of these stockings which inevitably ravage our daily lives?

The answer would be that we don’t know what chance is hiding from us, life is a path whose destination is unknown, whose detours are also unpredictable, but sometimes “happiness hides in the unknown”, as the saying goes. Hugo. So you have to dance in the unknown and keep the hope that life always ends up smiling at you, yes, just as the sun always ends up rising, despite all the hard knocks that life throws your way, despite all the down !

This quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince pretty much sums it all up: “It’s madness to hate all roses because a thorn has pricked you, to abandon all dreams because one of between them did not come true, to give up all attempts because we failed… It is madness to condemn all friendships because one of them betrayed you, to no longer believe in love just because one of them was unfaithful, to throw away every chance of being happy just because something went wrong. There will always be another opportunity, another friend, another love, a new strength. For every ending there is always a new beginning. »

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No man can escape the weight of suffering. Every man witnesses this at some point in his life. Whether through chronic depression, the death of a loved one, failure in studies, prolonged sadness, existential crises, a breakdown in love or friendship, separation, arguments, harassment , in short, we are naturally…

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Highs and lows


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