The blue or the black?

Most of the time, it’s fairly easy to see the good side of things. My blog posts kind of keep me in that discipline. The majority of people answer the question about how they are with a cheerful ‘fine’ or ‘not bad’. My mum always insists blue sky is on its way. Only yesterday she told me that her friend in Donegal said she could see a tiny sliver of blue after a day of persistent rain. My granny used to say she was ‘tip top’. People always like it when you are positive.

But some days the sun doesn’t shine. Some days granny was very lonely. Some days you can’t even pretend to be fine. The dark clouds gather and that is all you can see. It can happen for many reasons, or for no reason at all.

So what can we do, when we find ourselves in a dark place? It’s hard to rally, or find anything to keep us going then. I struggled onto a wooden bench in the garden last week. After I had looked away from the weeds I couldn’t clear, I saw a tiny, violet and yellow pansy, pushing up in between the concrete slabs. That flower made me smile. It wasn’t in the wrong place. It was just where it needed to be at that moment.

If you are stuck, overwhelmed with black clouds, think about the unexpected miracles that can keep you going when life is too hard to bear. Maybe you can’t even see a mouse’s waistcoat of blue sky, but it’s there, waiting for you.

Come on, we’ll find it together.