Over the past couple weeks, I’ve seen countless memes and pictures all over my Facebook feed depicting the excitement of 2016 coming to a close. This is presumably due to the fact that 2016 hasn’t gone the way that we wanted it to, with many surprises and negative news. In fact, I even saw a meme that depicted the concern over 2016 having one extra minute in it, showing just how fed up everyone is with the year. There seemed to be one bad news after another this year, making each day, week, and month stretch out for longer than necessary.

My family has never been one to celebrate Thanksgiving. It’s just another day and we’re a very small family, so there’s never any point for us to go the extra mile and make a feast. I think the closest we’ve come to celebrating Thanksgiving is going Black Friday shopping when stores open at 8 PM Thanksgiving night.

This year, we decided to go over to a close family friend’s house and have a subdued meal (nothing extensive, not even traditional Thanksgiving food). I expected warm hellos and a quick dinner followed by a routine “clean the dishes and chat” and then making our exit latest by midnight. What I didn’t see coming was sitting around till 2 into the morning talking about life stories, which ended up being one of the most eye-opening conversations I’ve had in my life.

During this long conversation, we talked about the different experiences many close ones in our lives had gone through. Many of these experiences were filled with pain, sadness and disappointment that life had served these innocent human beings without any provocation. Life happened- as simple as that, whether they liked it or not, even though they had done nothing wrong. After it happened, it was like the aftermath of a town that had just gone through a natural disaster.

As I listened intently, this feeling hit close to home because I knew what it’s like all too well. However, I did not find myself ruminating in the pain of my own past, but instead in shock of the hidden stories that one would have never known looking at these people. Everyone we had talked about I have met and personally talked to and I would never have been able to tell that they had a past with such a heartbreaking story. In fact, the aftershocks of these tales still remain in their lives like the cracks an earthquake leave behind, always a constant reminder of what the past is. However, these people still smile, still move on and find happiness somewhere.

That night I went to sleep realizing that it’s always easy to see the bad because it hurts us deeply and as with any human being, pain in the heart is a difficult burden to carry. We wait for the year to come to an end with giant hopes in our heart on how much better 2017 is going to be. But the truth is that there will still be something bad that happens, right? Because that’s just how life works, it’s never going to be all good.

The happiness lies somewhere in the ability to overcome and to persevere. The comfort lies in the little laughter we share with people close to our hearts and the smile we get to put on their faces. The peace is found somewhere in the crazy world where we can call home, where there is someone or something that can indicate that at the end of the day, everything will be okay. As the year comes to a close, I encourage myself and hopefully you too to just be thankful.