“What seems to us bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.”
Oscar Wilde

We can only really judge something as being good or bad in relation to something else. Time gives us perspective we lack while we’re in the midst of events in our lives. We’ve all heard the good news/bad news stories where something that seemed to be bad turned out to be good and vice versa. Take an example from my life.

For the past five months, I’ve been working hard on Life,forinstance, enduring the growing pains of doing a blog and managing the huge learning curve. When a post didn’t receive many comments, I would just go back to work, putting everything I had into the writing of the next post and supporting the bloggers whose work I enjoyed. Strangely, this felt good; to accept what was and to keep forging ahead without being obsessed with the outcome.

Then, people around the Blogosphere started saying nice things about Life,forinstance. More cool people visited and commented and it was all very overwhelming. Suddenly everything was different. Now that I wasn’t hiding under the radar anymore, I realized it was kind of cool when I was there; nobody watching me, doing my thing. It’s  a gentle example of the good news/bad news story; What good news – I’m blogging; What bad news – no one is reading; What good news – people are reading; What bad news – people are reading so I’d better do a good job! What good news – this is a challenge which makes it even more fun!

I remember reading a story about a man who refused to judge events in his life as either “good” or “bad”  as they were happening, claiming you could never know how things would ultimately turn out. Is that the path to serenity; not judging events at all? Is that even possible?

What do you think? How do you judge events in your life? Have you ever judged a situation as being good or bad and discovered later that you were wrong?

photo credit: John Haslam