It has already been almost a week since Thanksgiving. Hopefully, we all enjoyed the break from school, the time with family and the chance to eat (too much) good food and relax with a book or an Xbox controller. Perhaps we called friends to tell them how much they mean to us or made mental lists of the things we are grateful for. 
    Chances are, however, that something important, something we might never think to be thankful for, was left off of those lists — the Bad Things.
    The Bad Things are those horrible occurrences in our lives: the bombed tests, the breakups, the blizzards (the icy snow kind, not the cookie-dough kind), which make us wish we were someone else in an alternate universe where problems have yet to be released from Pandora's Box.
    The Bad Things are painful. They mess up our plans; they rearrange our futures. On the surface, it doesn't make sense to be thankful for something so disruptive and undesirable.
    But as ridiculous as it might sound, the Bad Things in life are often the reason that a multitude of good things occur. 
    For example, when a child grabs a tray of cookies fresh from the oven, he receives a deep burn, a Bad Thing. His hand feels like a million bees stung it at the same time, his mother is furious that he didn't stay away from the tray like she told him to, and he still hasn't gotten the cookie that he wanted.                 But at the same time, the child has learned valuable lessons about the nature of hot metal and obedience to his mother.
    In the same way, Bad Things that happen in our lives can teach us about the world around us and help us become better people.
    A 52 percent on a physics exam can force us to develop better study habits. Betrayal by a friend teaches us to be selective in trusting people. We get spit on by a llama — we learn to step back before we make fun of his ears.
    In these cases, it might be tempting to act like the child and simply get angry about our throbbing hand, but a more mature and beneficial reaction is to look at what has happened to us and learn from it.
    Even the worst Bad Things often serve to intensify the realization of the good things we do have. The death of a loved one can make us realize how supportive our friends and family are. A house fire can help us appreciate the little material things we take for granted. And most of all, making it through a tough time can show us we are stronger than we ever imagined. 
    In the end, the experience, character and knowledge we gain from the Bad Things in life are worth more than a little thanks.

Jessica Ulrich is a junior in English. Please send comments to opinion@spub.ksu.edu.

Comments

2 comments

Lee

Tue Dec 9 2008 12:00

I liked this article, and I guess K didn't get the point behind it. We face so many problems, things, or whatever you want to call it, and we forget about the lessons that go with them. Countless times, I have thought that a situation was the worst it could be, and later I realized that it was better it turned out that way, rather than the way I wanted it to.

K

Wed Dec 3 2008 10:30

What are these "things" that you are speaking of? I thought in columns we try to work on defining what objects are.

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