The Silver Lining in Your Dark Cloud

I love stories.

So let’s start off with a story here that I heard a very long time ago which you may have heard too.

Once upon a time there was a king who had an extremely optimistic prime minister who was always by his side and had this habit of remarking that everything happens for good.

One fine day, the king and his minister went for a little hunting expedition.

(Note: Playstations were not quite in fashion then and bored kings entertained themselves by going on these little expeditions during which they sat comfortably atop an elephant and practiced their archery skills on some unfortunate tiger out looking for lunch)

Anyway, story goes that our king got a little clumsy and accidentally shot an arrow that sliced off one of his toes (he was one lousy archer, I suppose).

At the end of the day, king and his minister returned after what turned out to be an unsuccessful hunting expedition (meaning no dead tigers and one less royal toe) and the king laments to the minister about his bad day.

The minister, rather than consoling the king, plays philosopher and tells him “everything happened for good your highness”.

The king had lost his toe, had wasted a day for nothing, is in intense pain and this wise guy tells him that everything has happened for good!

So our king does what normal kings in those days would do when somebody irks them –he throws this annoying prime minister into the dungeon!

A few days later, the king then decides to go on another expedition to the jungle on his own (don’t ask me why he decided to act overtly brave that day or why he was not hunting from atop his elephant).

This time around, the king gets lost and gets caught by the hunters of some fierce jungle tribe who had been instructed by their witch doctor to catch hold of the first able bodied human they came across and sacrifice him to appease some sadistic god.

However, just before the king was about be sacrificed, the tribesmen notice the king’s missing digit and realize that their God wouldn’t take kindly to the sacrifice of an ‘imperfect’ man and hence let the king go free.

Our hugely relieved king finds his way back to his palace and then goes all the way to the dungeon, frees his minister and tells him how the missing toe helped saved his life and apologizes to his minister profusely.

The minister hears the story, thinks for a moment and delivers his trademark line yet again “everything happens for good your highness”

But then the king realizes something else and asks the minister “But wait! What good did this do to you? I put you in a dungeon for 4 days without any food”

To which the minister replies, “Are you kidding me? I just lost 10 kilos and 3 inches off my waist. I was getting too fat just roaming around with you doing no real work”

“Seriously! That’s great! But did you realize that if you had not been in the dungeon, you would have been with me when I got caught and they would probably have sacrificed you when they couldn’t do that to me?”

Ok, that’s it for the fiction, let’s get back to reality.

The devouts try to explain the phenomenon by saying God works in mysterious ways, the Robin Sharma types would argue that it is about viewing the positive side of things.

I believe that there are positives in every adverse situation in life were we to open our eyes to it.

In my last post I had written about the worst year of my life. But come to think of it today, If I had not had that year, I’d never have met the guy who later turned out to be my closest friend for 14 years thereafter– the one person I’d trust to call in the middle of the night any day for anything.

Or, if I had perfect limbs and never had to undergo surgery and had not limped through those years of my life, I’d have probably taken my health for granted and never would’ve had the inspiration to take up running or have a fitness routine which have been key reasons for my relatively good health (most of the time at least).

When leaving campus life a little over two months ago, I had been desperately trying to find a house to move into and finally settled on something which was overpriced which I would not have taken up had I more time to search. The unexpected positive was that I ended up staying with somebody who taught me a life skill I never had a chance to learn before but always yearned to learn – swimming.

I guess every little dark cloud in our life does have a silver lining or at least gives us an opportunity for drawing that silver lining ourselves. And if we can’t see it now, it probably needs a little more time or we just need to look closer.

So let me leave you with that thought for now and meanwhile try to scratch my head and figure out the silver lining in my current status of affairs. Surely something good lies ahead!
PS: The author may have taken the liberty to make slight modifications to the original fable in the write up; what’s life without a little spice?

[From the author's blog archives - originally posted on sixstringsforsupper.wordpress.com]

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