I have to admit, sometimes enthusiastically positive people make me shiver, and not in a good way. Because let’s face it, life can suck. Like really suck big time. On any given day, any number of bad things can happen. You wake up with some innocuous pain and the doctor says it’s cancer, your boss is an arse, people are mean to you, you lose all your money in a bad investment, your kids torment you, you get attacked by cats (on the face), the possibilities are endless.

And there’s nothing worse than having someone ooze optimism all over your misery. Because I’m all like “You haven’t gone through a fraction of what I’m going through now, so go be positive somewhere else, thankyouverymuch.”

But it’s different when you meet someone who’s gone through a lot worse and yet they still somehow believe it when they say that everything is going to be ok. That sort of optimism is infectious. When you meet people like that, you know that they know what it means to feel pain, but yet they know that it’s not the end of the world. That we go through bad stuff for a reason, so that we would become better people.

Now, I know that’s exactly the kind of thing that you say to someone going through a rough patch if you want them to stab you in the eye but in my experience of going through bad stuff, it’s true. So before you shoot the messenger, hear me out.

Nobody’s life is perfect. When we look past all those layers of perfection, there’s bound to be disappointments, heartaches and failures. Some of us just hide it better than others but at the heart of it, we’re all hurting one way or another. And there’s something about going through tough times that brings out the best and worst in us. Under immense pressure, you see people buckle and crack (trust me, I’ve been there, to utterly crumble in a moment of crisis) but it’s also in these moments that you see how strong and loyal and awesome people can be.

Then the more important thing is that we learn to become better through a crisis. All our flaws become glaringly obvious when the heat is on and that’s the only way we can become better. Sometimes it’s our fault and sometimes it isn’t, but when it is, we’ve got to man up and say “I’ll do better next time”.

I used to wish I could live in Strawberry Shortcake land where it was just one never-ending party of singing songs and eating cake. I know better now than to hope for a crisis-free life. Of course I’m not dumb enough to want more problems in my life but I’m just saying that when it hits, it’s not the end of the world. I try to get past it in one piece as best as I can and hope that I get a decent break before the next one comes.

Right, I’m going to stop being preachy now. Oh wait, KIDS, YOU BETTER DON’T DO DRUGS. Ok, now I’m really done.