Anna-Catherine Kuenge ~ Assistant Editor
My favorite seafood place in Myrtle Beach has a slogan of “no bad days.” I have always liked their slogan mainly because it is idealistic thinking. What if we could go our whole lives, or even a week, with no bad days?
Sometimes, days start out unpleasant because of silly things such as losing keys, getting caught in traffic, or forgetting a homework assignment. While such occurrences can be frustrating, they are temporary and you can choose to not let them dictate your mood for the rest of the day.
However, sometimes bad days are not temporary; sometimes, they last for a long time.
There are some things in life- scary things- that seem to have no apparent purpose. For example, the night before my high school graduation, one of my classmates was killed in a car wreck. This death followed after another classmate, who committed suicide earlier in the semester. In addition, my class president’s mother died just a week before he had to give his commencement speech at graduation. While finishing high school is generally supposed to be a happy experience, it was one of the hardest times for my friends and me. Why did I get to walk across the stage, receive my diploma, and celebrate with my parents while other parents were planning funerals and grieving for their would-be high school graduates?
As much as I wish the aforementioned seafood restaurant slogan were true, we can all admit that it is not. For every moment of happiness, there is grief somewhere else. For every new life brought into the world, another one is being taken away from the world. Call it Yin and Yang, call it divine intervention, call it, to reference The Lion King, the “circle of life”; call it whatever you want, but please do not call it easy.
There are days in life where we feel like we cannot bear it anymore, but we must. There are days where everything feels meaningless, but we cannot let times like this stop us from pressing on with our lives. Your bad days – whether you want to admit it or not, whether you like it or not – matter.
To put it simply, bad days teach us how to help those who are also having bad days. Strangely enough, suffering can bring people together more than happiness ever can. Bad days reveal how deeply we are cared for by friends and family. Bad days make us remember the good days, and we realize that the latter will soon return.
If you are struggling with something, I know everything in you is telling you to give up; but, do not listen to that inner voice. Keep fighting and you never know what tomorrow may bring.