One second. You open your eyes to a bright new world, real and harsh and raw. 31 million seconds later, you try to crawl away from your mother before she puts you into the chair in front ofyour birthday cake with a big number one candle on it. Three hundred million seconds later, your path starts to change; there are bikes and scraped knees and kids being mean to other kids for
no reason other than “fun.” Five hundred million seconds later screams over a broken piñata turn into screams over the cops raiding your friend’s party. Suddenly you are tugging down your
shirt sleeves to cover the scars running up and down your arms and you feel as if your life is in ruins. Then, sometimes as if by magic or divine encounter, something changes. The world
doesn’t seem so dark anymore. You’ve found the thing that bandages your scraped knee, the reason to refuse alcohol or drugs, or the shining moment that makes you drop the blade and realize your worth. You’ve found your light.
There is light to be found in the worst of times and hope to be found in the of darkest places.
No matter how deep the cavern of your pain, there is always something that will pull you out, but you have to let it. You have to both accept your light’s help and take charge of your life and pull yourself up.
Search for the beauty and light in what may seem to be an ugly and broken world. Get lost in song or dance. Shove all of you rage and hurt into kicking a soccer ball. Find your hope in a God that rules over everything, or in a friend that has always been there for you when you need them. Life is a stream of seconds, each one just as precious as the last, and the world is stocked with beautiful things to dunk yourself into.
The world is not void of hope, life, or beauty, but you have to open your eyes and have a little faith in yourself –or in an idea bigger than yourself. Let the good things lead you out of the suffering, and find your light in the darkness.
