Finding silver linings in a year filled with clouds
For every cloud there is a silver lining. This is a year of clouds and seemingly few silver linings. But they are there.
With most clichés, we gravitate to the word in the phrase that makes us feel good. That one cliché about spilled milk, it’s an expression of encouragement to stop our “crying” about an unfortunate life circumstance. There is the cliché about birds and their feathers. The point is that they fly “together.”
Clichés are clichés because we say them over and over again. They are our verbal post-it notes.
We write them in letters and in text messages. We post them on social media and speak them out loud like exclamation points at the end of sentences. They are meant to make us feel better about whatever is happening in our lives, at least for a moment.
As we enter the autumn of a year of cloud filled skies, it’s helpful to remember that along the way there have been many silver linings. Some have been obvious but most we haven’t noticed, at least not while they are happening. That’s how silver linings are, we stumble upon them later when we’ve had time to sit and think about what we just went through.
I wish they weren’t that way so today I’m thinking of recent silver linings that…
