When you're going through a rough time you'll often hear people tell you that everything happens for a reason, but that's honestly that's the last thing we wanna hear when we're angry at someone or even with ourselves. Life seems to happen in an endless loop of triumphs and hardships- both minor and crucial. Sometimes things are going so well you're completely suspicious, up until everything goes to shit all at once and you're left wondering why. But at some point we've all learned that mistakes and regret are a central part of life, whether something is done to you or you make a wrong move and things change things for the worse. "Everything happens for a reason" might not bring us much comfort, but it's important to know that it stands for the only thing we can ever hold onto during our lowest points- our hope and resilience.

I found that the more I believed that everything happens for a reason, whenever something bad happened I wanted to kick myself in the ass. Training yourself to trust that every obstacle serves a purpose and wherever you are is where you need to be is not an easy task. Life has a funny (sometimes sick and ironic) way of testing you and pushing you until you learn your lesson or you see things from a new perspective. It would be naïve of us to believe that we always know what's best for ourselves, but as we get older and much wiser through our experiences it's become clear that not getting what we thought we wanted could actually be a brilliant stroke of luck.

Looking through a kaleidoscope you see patterns of colors made from bits of broken glass at different angles reflecting light off each other. As a kid, you probably looked through dozens of these admiring the colorful optical illusions from such a small toy. Seeing one now I thought of how beautiful it was that by looking through the cracks, I could see diamonds right in front of me. The scattered, jagged, disjointed pieces of our lives are transformed into something greater than before when we let light shine through them and look at them from a different angle. Nobody likes to be told to trust the world blindly without knowing why things happen, but if we always had the answers to our questions there would be no opportunity for growth or faith in our lives. The reasons for our pain might not always be presented to us, but it's up to us to find the significance in our struggle in order to move foward. Sometimes the pieces of our lives need to shatter and transform until we learn to see them in a new light.