“To see sunshine, weather the storm.”
In times of crisis, we must only outlast the season.
When you find yourself in a crisis, don’t forget the option of doing nothing. Be like a strong oak tree in a northern winter. The cold weather sweeps in for long months, the wind howls, the days get shorter, and the darkness grows longer.
The lifeless tree is frozen like a towering ice statue. In the worst of times, there is nothing to do but outlast the elements. The tree stands erect and takes it. It accepts and endures the pain. It does nothing. But the tree, frozen or not, survives until spring. It’s sometimes missing a branch, but it is alive.
During my worst financial adversity, when my situation was most grim, during the bleakest moments of the darkest months, one lesson stood above all the rest. I could lose my job, my income, my kids’ college funds, but no person or event had the power to take away my Inner Light. It was mine alone.
Inside each of us is a central, spiritual presence that we feel most when we are left with nothing else. This Inner Light was all I had at the time, and it helped me to endure and survive during this winter season of my life.
“If you want to see the sunshine,” Frank Lane said, “you have to weather the storm.” In the depths of winter, we must only outlast the season.
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