"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
Martin Luther King Jr.
This is a quote Stephanie posted earlier, but I thought it was too good not to repost on my blog. I'm sure that each and every person on this earth can take this quote and apply it to some aspect of their life. There are certainly times that it seems MUCH easier for me to get angry and upset when people don't do or say what I expect them to, or when a situation doesn't go the way I had planned. Such is life, but when you are having a bad day sometimes the little things become amplified. It's embarrassing, but I think we all find ourselves a little snippy sometimes because we've had a bad day. The thing that I find to be askew is what I sometimes define as a "bad" day.
As the result of a nonviolent demonstration, Martin Luther King was arrested, his home was bombed, and he was subjected to personal abuse. I'd call that a bad day.
More recently, the earthquake in Haiti killed 140,00 people. Hundreds of thousands more are left with out mothers and fathers & are missing brothers & sisters. Their homes and jobs are gone. There is no food and barely any water. I'd call that a bad day.
Now I can say that I don't think I've ever had a "bad day" in my life. Certainly nothing that would warrant me walking around with a black cloud over my head, unable to smile, and pushing away the people that love me. Certainly nothing that would cause we to WASTE a day wallowing in my own self pity.
There are countless other examples throughout history that serve as a reminder to me of how ungrateful and somewhat spoiled we have become over the years. Somehow we've lost our way. We've managed to stop being grateful for what we have, and focus instead on what we don't have, and then we obsess over the quickest and easiest route we can take to get it because we have fooled ourselves into thinking that we NEED it. Our families, and relationships, and our HAPPINESS fall by the wayside in our hostile pursuit of these things. Constantly chasing after something you can never have only makes you tired. Sometimes I think I'm lucky because my legs got tired early on, and I stopped running after all of the things I thought I "deserved". I could not be more grateful that I stopped before I ran right past the things that matter.
I'm emotional today thinking about MLK, because he was a man who knew what mattered. I hope that I can take a little bit of his courage, and carry it over into my own life so that I can do right by the people I share this earth with, always appreciate the ones I love, and never fail to realize that each day is an opportunity to do something that matters.
