superteacher

When bad happen a priest might say, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”  Well, I don’t claim to be very religious that I can preach about the Lord.  What I do know is that sometimes things happen for a reason.  For example, I was in a horrible automobile accident about a year ago.  What makes matters worse is that I didn’t have collision coverage which means I completely lost my car because the insurance company doesn’t have to replace it.  While I worked hard those first few months after the accident I was thinking about my horrible luck.  Then the strangest thing happened.  Gas prices started to skyrocket while the price of public transportation stayed the same.  Plus, my insurance wasn’t exactly cheap either.  In the end, I’ve been able to save over $4000 just by not having a car.  This all reminds me of a great speech by Philip Seymour Hoffmann in the film, Charlie Wilson’s War.  He’s trying to explain to Tom Hanks how we don’t know whether things are good or bad.  

“There’s a little boy and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse… and everybody in the village says, “how wonderful. the boy got a horse” And the Zen master says, “we’ll see.” Two years later The boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everybody in the village says, “how terrible.” And the Zen master says, “We’ll see.” Then a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight… except the boy can’t cause his legs messed up. and everyone in the village says, “How wonderful.”  And the Zen Master says, “We’ll See.”

So, before you get too depressed about something that has just happened to you whether it’s a divorce, losing a job, or losing a house, just remember that you might one day look back on this as a very lucky thing that happened to you.

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