Moving Forward in the Pervasive Face of Adversity!

A couple of days ago, a friend (back in Denmark) I hadn't had contact with in a really long time hit me up via Facebook Messenger and we spent a little time catching up.

It didn't take long for us to discover that both of us had been through an abnormally large chunk of adversity, over the past few years. Not that we think ourselves "special" or "unique" in that respect...

He'd lost his wife to breast cancer, almost died from Covid himself and had experienced a number of other setbacks... enough to make most people just want to give up.

After our conversation — it was getting late, in Europe — I found myself thinking about what it is that helps us keep going in the face of what seems like never-ending adversity.

I'm not a particularly optimistic person by nature but I do tend to be fairly hopeful. I find it easy enough to accept that life is filled with setbacks... and that the current state of affairs may royally SUCK, but I have always been able to find a glimmer of hope that there is going to be a better future, somewhere.

This, in spite of the fact that my "present's" haven't been particularly brilliant, most of the time!

In some ways, I suppose I should feel grateful that it's rarely a surprise or shock to me when bad things happen in life. I watch things like the crypto markets take a nose dive this afternoon... and then I shrug, write it off as "inevitable," and return to feeling hopeful that some day there will be better times.

Going back all the way to my teenage years — when I was, admittedly, severely depressed — I found myself getting by on the belief that some day better days would come along.

I might have waited for those days for five years, or a decade, but I kept holding out for them. In many ways, I'm still waiting for them... which invariably makes me ponder whether I have a completely unrealistic perception of what "better times" might actually look like. I'm open to that possibility.

Maybe what I really am... is a hopeful realist.

Maybe I have just gotten so used to the feeling of "almost drowning" that I have incorporated it into my reality as something normal.

Mrs. Denmarkguy insists that it is "very European" of me. Maybe there's a grain of truth in that. People in the USA do often seem like they have been indoctrinated into a belief that they are "owed" the good life more than I remember from growing up in Denmark, the UK and Spain.

Maybe I just accept that we have to make the most of what we have, rather than worrying so much about what we don't have.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!

How about you? Do you face adversity well? Or do setbacks tend to depress you? What do you do to help maintain a positive lifeview? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2024.01.08 00:07 PST
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