"When one door closes another opens... But often we look so long so regretfully upon the closed door that we fail to see... the one that has opened for us." ~Helen Keller 菜根谭：“迷则乐境为苦海，如水凝为冰；悟则苦海为乐境，犹如涣作水。可见苦乐无二境，迷悟非两心，只在一转念间耳。
Side thought: Everybody would have met their darkest moments in life sooner or later. It may be true that we tend to look too hard and too long at the closed door that we fail to notice another door has been opened for us. This is true wisdom. But alas... for most of us, we will only realise it after much effort or after a long time or don't realise at all. You see, when we are engrossed in our problem, it is not easy to 'jump' out to look at ourselves or situation. We often are clouded by our problems, we focus our attention on the problem(s) instead of looking for solutions or have the ability to look at the other side of the coin. Our perception is narrow, we lack a bird's eye view of the big picture. Things or events happen for a reason. They exist not to torment or destroy us. They are here to test, challenge, train our mental muscles. They will more often than not, reveal to us, who we really are and what we are made of... a fluffy mass that crumbles in the face of difficulty or a man of steel.
This reminds me of a story: A husband who is always dominant at work and at home is married to a mild mannered-submissive wife who does nothing but housework and taking care of their only son. One fateful day, their son met with an accident and was sent to hospital for operation. Both parents rushed to the hospital upon receiving news. Relatives and friends came to console them. They had assumed that the wife would be a nervous reck by now. To their surprise, the wife calmly explained what she knew as she was signing the papers for the operation. In contrast, the husband had totally broken down in tears and he looked totally lost and helpless... and thus, my friends... in times of crisis, do we show our true grit or are we a 'tweet'?
But on the bright side, we will get to know our weaknesses and start to work on them and turned them into true grit. My personal experience tells me that "self-pity", getting "sympathy" or "blaming others" are useless in solving your problems. We need to go through our own personal crisis ourselves and learn from it. These crisis do not turn us into "emotionless" beings, on the contrary, helped us gain wisdom and understanding of ourselves, of people-their reasons why they react/did certain hurtful things, why we react/did certain hurtful things to others... I guess this is as close to wisdom as I can get. I now understood why Buddha is always so merciful, kind and mostly very understanding to all.. even to his arch enemies who are out to bring him down, and in such situations, Lord Buddha is able to forgive and have great compassion/mercy towards them. I believe it was Jesus who said "if a man hit you in the left cheek, turn the other cheek and let him hit it as well" (something of this token, perhaps not the exact words). Such examples are countless in all "religious" figures... if you look carefully, you will see they possess similar qualities.
Enough of my chattering... now I leave you with a few questions: "Do you know who you are?" "Are you your master of your life?" "Is happiness/peace within or without?"
I would suggest that we do not look at an opened door nor a closed door; we should rather, open our own door and take a look inside ourselves... what do you think?
