What is your dark history? Every country, place, and person has a dark side in their history that has made them great. Because you are living your dark history, I prayed for you, and God answered, “My child, spring is coming.” Socrates said in seriousness, “Children, this is life. Life is what you choose, and there is no repeat.”
In facing a one-chance life, we have three options. Make solemn choices, choose to live without regret, and if regret happens, we need to face it, and fight for change. If it won’t change, we accept it bravely, and keep moving forward.
I believe every nation and person will experience their own time of “dark history.” They are the times of pain and anxiety. They make you wonder, “Why me? Why did this happen to me?” But remember, it’s best that it happened earlier than later. In dark history, you gain understanding though the experiences—your life lessons. Maybe, you need to learn love, courage, endurance, patience, and so on.
Just like Jesus played His role of charity, what is your role? Socrates said, “Everyone has sunshine inside them, the trick is learning how to make it glow.” Have you found your sunshine, moonlight, or shimmering star? Don’t judge that others don’t experience dark histories. Everyone has them, you just don’t see them.
Everyone knows about the United States’ dark history; how they fought a war of independence with England. After winning the war, France, the nation that loves revolution, sent the Statue of Liberty to the United States as a gift. The American civil war, a revolutionary watershed, moved the US into the modern industrial era. I like what president Lincoln said, “Everyone is equal before the law.” But is this true in America today? The dark history experience of America made it strong, and placed it as the leading country of the world.
In Taiwan there was a writer named Wei Wei whose dark history included the experience of being a “dinosaur girl” (overweight). She was abandoned by her boyfriend and couldn’t find true love. She committed herself to a strict diet, and through much struggle, lost weight from 85kg to around 40kg. She published a book about how she succeeded with her diet and became famous as a result. She was known for her ability to make beauty happen through hard work. Feeling regret, her boyfriend came back and wanted to make up and be together again. Remembering how the boyfriend had made fun of her, and had abandoned her, Wei Wei refused to be his girlfriend. Later, she found true love with another man and became a mother to two children. Her dream had come true.
Perhaps you and I are experiencing the pain of broken love that feels like the stab of a knife to our hearts. Perhaps there is something for us to learn. We can learn how to heal from emotional pain and physical illness, how to appreciate that health is the greatest wealth on earth, how to face and overcome the pain of losing a job, how to win in competitive markets, and most of all, how to find and be a better lover and partner to someone all throughout life.
So, let’s find the light in the midst of our dark histories. This is the most important thing. In the end, it’s what you learn from your experience that counts.