The Day After Valentines

The bitter taste of reality is a rude awakening the day after Valentine’s Day. No matter what you did to tune out the simple and blunt truths of insecurity yesterday, the sun has risen again and there they are staring you in the face. Tuning out the truth to avoid facing it is either postponing the inevitable or exacerbating the condition. By permitting a situation to victimize you, you are creating and propelling an unhealthy perspective with such a negative lifestyle. So if we can’t ignore it and we can’t run from it then what will we do?

Accept reality: too many of us try to ignore or run from our situation. No matter what phase of life you are in; married, unmarried, in college, high school, or the last years of your life you have to accept the truth for what it is.  There are many times in our lives that we dream about the next step or even the last one but ignoring the present will only lead to wasted time and precious life.

Don’t allow the situation to dictate your perspective. Each one of us has a story to tell, a history lived out, and choices we have made, which has brought us to our current place in life–whether we like it or not. One thing each of  us also needs to understand is we have the choice to see our lives as an opportunity or an obligation. In whatever phase of life, situation, or current melt down you are in, always remember the quality of a person is not determined by one’s failures but rather how he/she improves from them.

A man presenting to an audience asked everyone to listen to two versions of the same song on the piano. The first version was played using only white keys and then the second using black and white; without a doubt everyone deemed the second as the better version. The white keys are pure and perfect notes and the black keys are the flats and sharps.

Life, as with music, is full of flat and sharp moments but they only add the beauty in the song we call life. With each note, every situation, I urge you to step into a healthy lifestyle growing from mistakes, learning from the past and accepting every moment for what it really is: a gift.