Thinking about how challenges are all around us all the time throughout life caused me to stop for a moment when I saw this quote. We all have challenges that we are dealing with. Each and every day. We see life challenges in the news, on social media, talking with friends and neighbors; enough to know that we are not alone when it comes to having challenges to deal with.
In pausing life here for a moment thinking about this idea, with a cup of coffee too by the way, I have come to a couple of main thoughts that stick out to me. First, I am indeed not the only one with problems and challenges. In fact not only do we all have them every day in our lives, some obviously are far worse than what we have to deal with. The thought that others do have it worse off than I do helps me to see that I need to not complain about my challenges and that I need to not let them define me along with not letting me quit due to those issues that I have.
Another thought that comes to me when I think about this is that there is tremendous empathy and caring for others that comes out of taking a few moments to dwell on these thoughts. Empathy is a point that I try and get my students to think about every year as I think it's one of the most powerful abilities that we have in connecting with other people. It's one that we all need to do more of in this world especially with all the lousy examples we see in the media about the selfishness and lack of character that seems to be all around us in our world.
These two ideas are really helping me as I face another of many challenges in my life as I go in for knee replacement surgery tomorrow. It truly has been a long and painful process over the last few years of trying to do everything I could to help my knee pain. It has finally come down to the fact that the severe arthritis that I have started to battle now in my life has caused me to make some choices to get back my quality of life that I want to have. I look forward to this process because I know at the end of it will be a life with less pain and my ability to do things I love to do. I know there will be more procedures that I will need to have done in the future due to these changes in my body as I get older. But I know there are so many people worse off than me, I will not let this stop me from doing the things that I know I need to do along with the new things I want to do in my life. There are so many more meaningful moments in my life that going through this and other upcoming challenges, will make them all the more sweeter.
What challenges are you going through right now where maybe you can take these couple of ideas to help you get through them and look ahead for better days? Let me know as we can help each other out with some new thoughts, ideas and discussions about this and many other life events that we all go through.