8 Bitter Truths of Life 2

8 Bitter Truths of Life 1

#5 Everything ends

According to the Greek playwright Euripides, ‘A bad beginning makes a bad ending’. Corroborated by Rosa Guy, he claims that ‘Even forever comes to an end’. The bitter truth here is that everything that has a beginning has an end. Life, love, youth, enjoyment, sorrow, pains all end and that is what makes them valuable.

Always know, that particular thing you are passing through, whether sorrow, pain, discomfort would come to an end one day. Good things also come to an end when we leave them for those that are alive. What you should be more concerned about is starting well and ending well. A bad start most times signals a bad end and it would take a lot of effort to correct a bad start so it doesn’t end badly. Similarly, starting well creates great chances of finishing well if one could endure to the end, else, you forfeit success if you relent or give up after starting well. ‘Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin’ - Donald Barthelme

See this: Fear: The Limiting Factor to Success and Breakthrough

Always remember that all you have would soon belong to another person, especially those that were not there when you were struggling to acquire them. Therefore, our priorities should be how to leave a lasting legacy that would live after our demise. Things people would remember us for and not curse us in our graves.

‘Death is a punishment to some, to some a gift, and to many a favor.’ - Lucius Annaeus

#6 Appreciate Everything

According to Nina Simone, ‘Often you don't know how truly happy you were then until you look back and realize how much worse things could have been’. So many people are ungrateful about the things in their lives. When they have good things, they remember no one, but when little test or trouble comes, they run helter-skelter, blames everyone and start to recount how God has deserted them. Job said in the Holy Book that ‘Can one get good things of life and not get the bad things?’ 

Always look outside this moment, reflect on the past, look at how you have been saved many times from evil. Even some didn’t have up to that accident you experienced and they are no more. There are more than millions of people all over the world that don’t have access to quality education like you did. There are so many children down in Africa and Asia suffering from different kind of diseases, looking for what to eat just for the day and you have ate three times and still do not appreciate your God or people around you that have helped you to the top.

 Check also: The Great Men's Cross: Lionel Messi

‘Stop being selfish and see the other side of life. You can’t take all the good of life and not take the bad. Every sorrowful moment is but for a moment, it would surely end’.

‘If you want to know how to value home, you should go abroad for a while among strangers’. - Thomas Chandler Haliburton

#7 Be a realist about the big things

According to the French statesman Jacques Delors, ‘You can’t be a true idealist without being a true realist.’ You have to outgrow the world of fantasy and see things how it is. What you are seeing and thinking is called apparent vision, one which appears to be real but it’s not real, one which appears to be there but it is not. Warren Buffet says, ‘I don't look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.’ 

Life is more than sitting and expecting things to fall in place rather than acting. You can’t do a work for three years success and expect the success to last for a lifetime. It is what you sow you reap. Start working for things and not just hoping for things. Be realistic for what you want, this life isn’t a movie, it isn’t a story or fiction, it is a reality.

Life isn’t a movie, you need to have a plan, have an artist’s ambition but an engineer’s mindset.

‘The Arab who builds himself a hut out of the marble fragments of a temple in Palmyra is more philosophical than all the curators of the museums in London, Munich, or Paris’ - Anatole France 

 Read this: The 3 Power Packs of Life

#8 Figure out a way or don’t complain

‘Blame yourself as you would blame others; excuse others as you would excuse yourself.’ Everything still would boil down to your stupidity, idiocy, irresponsibility, indecency, immorality, and inactions. Everybody has his own life to live and face, so your unsuccessful attempts is your own doing. A Chinese proverb says, ‘He who blames others has a long way to go on his journey, he who blames himself is halfway there and he who blames no one has arrived’. 

Blaming other people for your woes would never end your woes, it will only complicate them. Reduce your expectations from people, nobody owes you nothing. You will be less disappointed when people don’t fulfill their part of agreements when you already prepared for their disappointment. ‘People can disappoint you, but don’t disappoint yourself.’

‘One of man's greatest failings is that he looks almost always for an excuse in the misfortune that befalls him through his own fault, before looking for a remedy—which means he often finds the remedy too late’ - Cardinal de Retz

A must read: Consistency: Why Still water runs deeper

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