Misfortunes – Blessings?
“Even misfortunes are part of your belongings.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
If you have ever read “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, you might recognize this quote. The amount of wisdom in just a few words! As we traveled along the French countryside last week, several misfortunes happened, credit cards got stuck in automatic parking pay stations, expensive sun glasses ended up on the bottom of the Baise River, not to speak of blisters and bruises, cuts and mosquito bites. Misfortunes happen and they are part of life. We are attracting them into our lives and we can choose how to deal with them. We can get angry and upset or we can roll with the punches. We can react emotionally and sometimes verbally or we can respond with ease and grace and laugh about ourselves. As I am writing this, I am sitting in our house in the German Alps, which has the whole basement full of dehumidifiers and with wholes drilled into the basement floor, like Swiss cheese. Just before coming on our retreat, I had been awakened at 2:30 am with the news that our house in Germany had flooded, again. A misfortune indeed! And a costly one as well, since no insurance company will cover the cost. And yet I feel very content in knowing that this misfortune is also part of my belonging. For some reason I am attracting floods into my life and it’s up to me to accept it and laugh about myself. Who knows, maybe there is a blessing in it after all. What misfortunes are part of your life and how are you dealing with them?
