Look for the Silver Lining


When people treat us badly through no fault of our own it's natural for us to feel heartbroken. In my experience it doesn't help to dwell on the pain for too long because if we keep reliving the hurtful memories we won't give our hearts a chance to heal. Our thoughts impact our emotions so when we think about negative things we're likely to feel sad and unhappy. That's not to say that we should bury our heads in the sand and pretend that terrible things aren't happening - not at all. If we don't think about what went wrong we won't be able to take steps to prevent it from happening again.

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Ari Lennox recently made a tearful video expressing how hurt she felt after being compared to a dog on Twitter. At first I was thinking that it would have been better if she hadn't seen the disgusting tweet because I wanted her to be protected from the pain. However, after scrolling through Twitter and reading some of the responses I realised that there was a purpose to her pain. Through her negative experience, Ari Lennox was able to shine a huge light on self-hate in the black community. In the below tweet, a rapper named GUAPDAD 4000 reveals how the situation with Ari Lennox got him thinking about how many black men don't love themselves and they show it via hate of black women. This tweet was made powerful by the fact that GUAPDAD 4000 acknowledged that he 'used to be this way'.


They say that every cloud has a silver lining to encourage people to be optimistic in negative situations. However, sometimes it's difficult to find a silver lining when we are in the middle of the storm and in those situations we need to let the storm pass. As a wise man once said, 'there's a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance' (Ecclesiastes 3:4). Happiness is a choice and I choose to be happy by refusing to let negative experiences keep me down.