I am not philosophizing

Yes, what you are reading is not philosophy or mere filler; it is a truth that guides me through every crisis in my life. Not every negative experience we go through in our lives is purely evil, nor is every crisis that arrives and drains our energy, hope, and enthusiasm merely that. It may be the seed of something we would never have seen had our lives continued in their calm and monotony. Our general problem is that when a problem arises, we see it in its full magnitude, while our capacities to face it, solve it, or even end it shrink and diminish. It is impossible to view the loss of a beloved person as something beautiful, or to rejoice in a sudden, unannounced major material loss. Yet, we completely overlook at that moment that the human mind possesses unexpected capacities that can reframe the same scene from a stunningly different angle. Merely rephrasing our question to ourselves at the moment any problem or crisis occurs will certainly cause us to reconsider the situation from another perspective. What can I do with the effort, resolve, or ability that remains to me, or even with the money left after this disaster? Personally, I often use this analogy to explain my conviction: imagine you are in a pitch-black cave, unable to see its walls or know where it ends, and then you glimpse a very small point of light in the distance. Here comes the wisdom, or the wise step, after you choose between staring at all the surrounding darkness or fixing your eyes on that tiny point through which beautiful light seeps in. While the darkness is real, the point of light is also real; the difference lies in which one you choose to focus on. With every minute you focus on the point of light, you begin to move toward it, because it gradually grows larger, then even larger, until you discover that what you thought was an almost invisible dot is actually an exit from the phase you have passed through—the dark cave. Such is life. The point of light may be an illness that forced you to rearrange your life, a loss that revealed the value of what you still have, a failure that taught you what success would not, a disappointment that introduced you to the truth about certain people, or a solitude that made you meet yourself for the first time. The years we lose leave us with something that cannot be bought: the experience of life, with all its sweetness and bitterness. I do not mean by this that we should rejoice and celebrate crises, but rather that we should not give crises more weight than they deserve, nor allow them to take more than they have already taken. There is a vast and enormous difference between a person who, after any crisis, asks themselves, “Why did this happen to me?” and continues to ask this question, and another person who, as soon as the storm subsides, poses a different question: “What can I do with what has happened?” I believe that a significant part of our strength in life begins here: we may not always choose what happens to us, but we can often choose what we make of it. When the darkness intensifies, do not ask for the entire cave to be lit up at once. Simply look for the point of light, however small, focus on it, and move toward it. Most importantly, do not despise or belittle it for its smallness. Iqbal Al-Ahmad