“Everything bad in life is eventually a blessing.”

I’m not sure where I read this – it may well have been in this wonderful novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Like all the best epigrams, it is deeply wise, even if it overgeneralises. I can’t think of many instances from my own life where it isn’t true. A breakdown, a miscarriage, a job lost – they all led to better things.

The phrase reminds me of something Winston Churchill supposedly said on losing the 1945 election. His wife apparently told him that defeat may well have been a blessing in disguise. “Madame, if this is a blessing, it is indeed well disguised,” he replied.

And yet a blessing it was. Britain got Attlee, the welfare state, the NHS. Churchill got a rest, and then his swansong six years later. The rest is history.

And so to the present. Though our current blessings may also be well disguised, we must count them. I have just listened to a fine podcast on this, an interview with Mo Gawdat, who has expressed some of the most sensible, positive, beautiful sentiments about the crisis that I have yet heard. If you click on one link this week, let it be this: an hour of your life that will make you feel better.

Click for other Upside blessings

Source:
Mark Rice-Oxley
The Upside
Journalism that uncovers real solutions: people, movements and innovations offering answers to our most pressing problems.

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