Hardship

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The ancient Greek already knew this; whenever times are tough you present the people with heroes that are going through tough times as well ~ yet come out on the other end, well, a hero.
The idea is that when we are going through tough times, seeing our hero going through ‘tough times x 10’ shows us that we are, relatively speaking, not doing all that bad. It could be a lot worse.

Nothing much has changed over the last 18 or so centuries...

In our age, whenever the economy is taking a turn for the worst, whenever we see big companies and perhaps even banks take a ‘not so honorable approach’ in the way they conduct their business; whenever we feel cheated by our governments ~ or maybe just by life in general ~ it doesn’t take long for this to be reflected in the series we may watch on TV.
In one series after another the ‘good guy’ ~ our hero ~ is confronted with hard times, just like we are in our own lives. Except he (or she) is experiencing hardship on steroids!

Our hero is cheated, betrayed, lied to, stolen from to name a few things. And not just by the ‘bad guys’, but by their friends, co-workers, bosses, family ~ you name it.
And while this can be a ‘one episode thing’ ~ it seems that when in ‘real life’ people encounter a prolonged stretch of hardship, whatever it is our hero in our favorite TV series is going through becomes at least a multi-episode event ~ sometimes even an ‘all season’ event.
Ultimately of course our hero will be victorious! Setting the example for us. Inspiring in us the belief that we too will be victorious in overcoming whatever it is that is happening in our lives...

While that positive reinforcement is a good thing; from a spiritual perspective anything that happens in our lives will help us take the next step on our path of personal growth and learning. From that spiritual viewpoint there is no such thing as a truly negative thing ~ only those things that we experience as unpleasant in order to get us to move; to change. To get us to adopt new perspectives. To reexamine our attitudes. To evaluate whether the things we have and the things we do are still serving us from a deep inner personal level...

Only after we have taken a good look at what is happening in our lives can we determine if we really want to continue doing the same things we have always done. Or if we would rather turn a new leaf and get pointed in a new direction.
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