Oneness includes good and bad

We all want to be happy and successful. We want our loved ones to experience a pain-free life. We want security and peace of mind.

But we all experience the storms of life. Sometimes these are small and sometimes they overtake our emotions. Sometimes they seem to linger on and sometimes it is over in a flash.

We have been taught to see these things as bad. We want them to end. But when we explore systems thinking we often find that the good and bad coexist. Most of the good things in life come from challenge. We have to realize the changing world will mean peaks and valleys. It isn’t that the valleys are bad, it is that they are part of the same landscape, the same system.

In Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life, by Dr. Wayne Dyer, the author says, “Change your view of the peaks and valleys of all of life to an attitude that allows you to discover what’s hidden in both of those experiences. Begin to see wholeness rather than good or bad fortune. See opposites as parts of oneness, rather than disrupting surprises.”

Life will always include both good and bad fortune. Instead of spending all our energy judging each moment, we should learn to allow life to unfold and flex to keep up with the change. That flexing will mean we grow and improve.

It isn’t that these two are completely separate. Often bad experiences contain learned wisdom. We don’t learn the lesson unless we go through the struggles. We have to work through the problems to know how to avoid them next time.

If we, instead, take the view that all negative experiences are bad, we won’t learn from them. We won’t sit back and accept our situation, good or bad, and then work to improve.

Life isn’t perfect by our standard definition. But that imperfection creates opportunity to learn and get better. Our journey through life shouldn’t be a constant trial to determine whether each moment was good or bad. Rather, we need to see the oneness of the system. We have to understand that they both coexist.

This will help us accept the storms and work to get through them. This doesn’t mean you enjoy those painful moments, just that you accept them. You know they are part of the same system that provides the beautiful moments in life.

If you are currently in the throes of life, slow down and take it day by day. Work to learn from your experience. Strive to come out better to improve your life. This doesn’t mean you avoid all problems, it means you will be capable of working through problems. You don’t sit back and claim the world is unfair whenever hardships surface. Instead you face those hardships with vigor and do what you can to make the best of it.

Everyone gets caught up in self-pity from time to time, but we all need to realize there is no need. Everyone experiences good and bad fortune. Everyone has peaks and valleys in their life. In order to improve, we have to accept the good and the bad and constantly strive to improve and get better.