Here's a paradox that we often see, but rarely take solid note of. One of the more difficult truths to accept about life isn't that it's harsh -- it's that it can also be very pleasant and very rewarding.

There are many lessons about life that must be learned, most of them accessible only through time and experience. Every day that passes brings us in contact with different people and different events. Inevitably, we take in these experiences, and they become a part of us, as do the actions we take in dealing with them.

For each of us, life's course flowchart is different, although we do share many of the same required sessions. As human beings bound by particular cultures and societies, there is a broad yet specific range of experiences we can go through; reasonable probability dictates that we'd encounter things that other people might have. It's to be expected that as students of a particular institution, for example, a number of you would have to placate the same unpleasant teacher, or end up painfully infatuated with the same gorgeous person who regularly hangs out in the library.

However, since we're all different people, something I've been harping on regularly, we can't help but have different means of processing, appreciating, and acting on the things we happen to encounter in common with other people. That's why it's relatively easy to give advice to people about situations you may have had that are similar to theirs, but not quite as simple for them to act as you did, or as you suggest they should.

Experiences, be they good or bad, come to us on an unavoidably (and sometimes annoyingly) regular basis. And, once again being the unique individuals we all are, we each react to them as our personalized mindsets and emotions dictate. Some of us may take bad news with great lamentation, for example, while others may accept it calmly and quietly.

Returning to the paradox I started with, stop and consider how you feel when things turn out really badly, and seem to stay that way. We all get those times, when nothing ever seems to go right, and unpleasantness seems to be the sharp buzzword of our day/week/month. We can't help but feel down about it, and that's to be expected. One should avoid, however, the seductive pitfall of conceding that things will always be that way. It's so easy to just let the hurt of it all keep you in the dumps, believing that you're somehow fated to suffer for interminably long periods of time.

That's not true.

Life's experiences, whether you believe it or not, tend to balance out. True, life can really suck sometimes, but there is roughly the same chance for things to work out as there is for them to blow up in your face. What you have to understand is that, to quote an interesting film, "it can't rain all the time."

In the midst of your suffering, can you accept that? Or, more to the point, are you willing to? Can you face your pain, and believe that things will be alright?

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Keep the faith, and you will inevitably break through to better times.

[First published by Perspective, DLSU - College of St. Benilde]