the silver lining...

If there's one thing I've learned in my 23 years of living, it's that sometimes life doesn't go my way.
In fact, it rarely does.
There are always those days when it feels like literally everything is stacked against me.
Like I'm just trying and trying to climb over the great wall of China.
Sometimes I grab my climbing gear and go at it with nothing but pure determination.
Other days, I stand staring at its height in fear.

Anymore, I feel like I've become increasingly weary of the world.
The older I get, the more taste of negativity I experience.
I've seen a lot of the ugly parts of the world.
And sometimes I know I let those ugly parts dictate my life.

It's so easy to forget what we're supposed to learn.
We should always make things into life lessons.
Just learn from it and move on.
THAT is soooooooo much easier said than done.

But today I sat, terrified, of today's outcomes.
I woke up feeling like everything was going to fall to pieces before I ever even took a shower.
I shook it off, got out of bed, and decided that the best way to win is to get up and fight.

Sometimes we let our own fear of striking out, keep us from playing the game.
But what we forget is, that it's not about winning or losing.
It's about how well we played.
If we go down swinging........well that's kind of a win, isn't it?

I remember I had this one criminology professor in college.
He was all straight criminology and 100% against Psychology.
Unfortunately, for me, I was a Psychology student minoring in Juvenile justice.
This means that allllll of my well written (yes, I'm conceited--they were good!) papers, were based off of psychological theories. I am incapable of thinking of humans as hedonistic and I firmly believe that all behaviors stem from psychological trauma, environmental factors, and genetics.
Having said that, I went off on a tangent in one of papers, indicating that the problem was more psychological warfare, rather than a bunch criminals being bad people.....

Long story short, he told me I needed to take a new approach and follow the book on my next paper.
But he was wrong. 

He was asking me to write an opinion paper, then telling me what my opinion should be. 

Should I not stand up for what I believe in? 

I was given 2 choices. 

Write the paper his way and receive an A.
Orrrrr write it my way, and risk failing the class.

 (He'd given me poor grades all semester leading up to this.)
At this point, I didn't care.
He was wrong. 

You can't ask someone to speak out their opinion and then punish them, for that opinion.
I'm not proud of the C I received on that paper or even the C I got in the class.
But I AM proud of that paper.

I don't know when I decided to stop standing up for what I believe in.
I've always been incredibly opinionated and independent.
I know that I'm quirky and a little neurotic.
But I am unapologetically me.
My opinions, my thoughts, my beliefs.
This is who I am.

There will be days when people are going to disagree.
But today, I learned that sometimes when one person stands against you, two more stand behind you.
Sometimes it's hard to know where your support is. And the only way to find it, is to stand up for what is right and God will place the right people to guide you through it.

Not everyone is going to like you.
People will hate you.
AND people will love you.
There are going to be people who don't appreciate you and recognize your goodness or your great work.
But there will also be people who will go out of their way to make sure you are recognized.
And it's taking those moments and those little acts of love and making them count.
Savoring them.
Hold onto them. Even when they don't come around very often.

And when things are falling apart and you want to give up because you feel as though the world is against you. 

Well, stick around, because the ending just might be beautiful.

It's easy to run away from things when life gets hard.
But life is a mixed bag, we all get some good, and we all get some bad.
The more time you spend figuring out how the world is going to screw with you, well the more you will find.
But sometimes you have to stick around long enough for your luck to find you.

Sometimes you just have to find the silver lining.
Find it, hold onto it, and smile.

We all come from different walks of life and we all have struggles.
Take them, learn from them, and let it be beautiful.
Because that is your silver lining.