No one wants to be thrown into crisis.  No one wants to lose their home, to not pay their bills, to have someone they love die.  No one wants to be in a car accident.  No one wants to hit rock bottom and have to look at their own behavior and how it might have made a difficult situation even more untenable.  No one wants to have an emotional breakdown, at least no one of whom I’m aware.

And yet there is this funny thing about crisis.  It can make us better people.

Most of the time, most of us fumble our way through whatever crises we have to navigate in our lives and it most certainly does not make us better people.  Most of the time, for most of us, it’s just one more packet of suffering to put in the memory banks and fervently hope it never happens again.

Sometimes, however, in those moments when we are stripped of everything… sometimes instead of responding with the tense tightness of utter resistance, we can take a deep breath, open our eyes for maybe the first time, and boldly walk forward, knowing more about ourselves now than before.  Sometimes it works like this.

Of course, it’s also true that we can look back on a time that we experienced as utterly horrible and with the wisdom of hindsight admit that some pretty amazing and stellar things happened because of that crisis that never would have been able to occur otherwise.  Ever wonder how our lives could be lived if we didn’t wait for hindsight to accept that?  What sort of lives would we be living if we trusted that something good was going to come of it?

Of course, we might be wrong.  That’s true.  But if it leads to being calm, composed, level-headed and insightful while in the midst of a crisis… well, it’s kind of a win-win scenario, wouldn’t you say?