When the Bad Things Turn Out to Be for the Greater Good

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Less than a week into a month-long car rental agreement, a tiny stone hit the windscreen and an immediate twenty inch crack developed across the driver’s side. I sighed internally as I had rented and paid for excess insurance via a broker, which was the cheapest way of doing it, so I knew it wasn’t going to be a simple process.

I had to return the car and swap it for another, pay the rental company for a new windscreen and claim it back from the broker’s insurance. Then as I was driving to the rental company the satellite navigation sent me on a very convoluted route that took twice as long as the most direct one would have. Being unused to driving a manual transmission for many years now, I was getting stressed as the roads narrowed and twisted and the driving was quite taxing as I changed up and down gears.

I was thoroughly fed up and then I had the thought that perhaps this whole palaver had served a purpose. As I traverse through life I often find that the things that happen that seem annoying, frustrating, painful even, can turn out to have rather lovely silver linings.

In this case that became apparent as soon as I arrived at the rental company’s front desk. The rental assistant had been expecting me and asked whether I’d mind an automatic transmission; I melted with relief. Quite what the UK’s obsession is with manual gears I cannot fathom, but automatics are in the minority. Although I drove with a stick for seventeen years, I’ve since driven seventeen years in automatics, and I choose ease over active gear grinding any day.

The car I have been given now is so intuitive, smooth and easy to drive. Yes it would have been lovely to have had that as my rental from the outset, but perhaps I needed reminding of the luxuries I take for granted. Whatever the reason I certainly feel extremely grateful, particularly as I am taking my children on holiday with their family this week and have lots of hours of driving ahead of me.

As I look back on many of the circumstances of my life, whether as benign as this example, or more poignant – as in the troubled journey I had in eventually having children – I have found that life has its ebbs and flows. Having deliberately reflected on many of these scenarios in my life, I have developed an absolute faith that (regardless of whether it is clear to me in the moment) life always seems to be working out for me.

In the case of my children, they are pregnancies five and six. It was not a straight forward process, with blighted embryos each time prior, something the experts said would only happen once and couldn’t explain. Starting with the first pregnancy when I was 24 years old, it took until I was 38 before my first child was born. But I believe I have made a better mother (albeit it an often very tired one) for the wait.

I’m perhaps more grateful, more considered and more patient than I might otherwise have been, and I underwent a lot of personal growth and became steadier in many ways (financial, health and so forth) in the intervening years.

Where I find it most challenging to explain my faith that bad things turn out for the greater good is when it comes to people suffering and dying. No one wants to lose a loved one, nor see them suffer, but none the less it happens with regularity.

There is nothing as certain as death in our life, and it can be heartbreaking to hear people’s stories about those who they have lost or who are in pain. Certainly having experienced it myself several times, I don’t wish that on anyone. However, we all know the stories of people triumphing over adversity, and I do think that that philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was onto something when he said “To live is to suffer. To survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

And as Linda Bray recounts “There is an ancient tribal proverb I once heard in India. It says that before we can see properly we must first shed tears to clear the way.” It did certainly occur to me growing up that in order to truly know something was good I had to experience what bad felt like.

Now in my fifties with many trials, tribulations and tragedies behind me, and no doubt many more ahead, I am grateful that life presents me with the whole spectrum of experiences from desolation to joy. It gives me a depth of understanding and compassion I would have otherwise lacked, and I generally accept the frustrating, painful and downright difficult experiences I have with more grace.

What about you? Where are the moments in your life that you can point to the silver linings, the times when the bad things turn out to be for the greater good?

​If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy What Do the People in Your Life Have to Teach (Good and Bad)?, How Would Life Be Different if You Believed in Yourself?, The Inevitable Pain of Returning to Love After Years of Abandoning Yourself and Leverage the Astonishing Power of Intuition, Flow and Kindness.  To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.