Have you ever had a period in your life where you have thought to yourself, “Why is this happening to me? When will this end? I wish my life was better! I wish this had never happened to me! I’m too young to be feeling this much pain?” Yeah, me too. Life does not always go the way you planned it out in your journal as a kid. Sometimes people you love die. Sometimes people that you love hurt you. Sometimes you make a mistake. Sometimes people you care about stop caring about each other. All of these things tear us apart. Each one causes its own scar and its own grief.

When you are young, you want everything to be good. You want everything to be “the way it's supposed to be.” Sometimes the things that are seen as bad are exactly what we need. Sometimes experiencing the hard times is what shows us the good times.

I heard a story once maybe 12 years ago that was more or less like the one below:

There once was an old man with an ugly heart and a young man with a beautiful heart. The young man’s heart was untouched and the townspeople thought it was beautiful. They gathered around the young man to adore his untouched heart. The old man’s heart was considered ugly by the townspeople because it was misshapen and had pieces that did not match, holes, and scars. The townspeople laughed at the old man's ugly heart. The old man had given pieces of his heart to all of the people he had loved in his life. Some of them had given pieces of their own heart to him as well, but not all of them did. There had been people in the old man’s life that had ripped parts of his heart out and then left. There had been people that had made a tear and tried to repair it, leaving a scar.

The young man had never given a piece of his heart to anyone. He laughed at the old man’s ugly heart...but then the young man noticed something. The old man was happy. He was fulfilled, even though he was not the one with the “beautiful” heart. The young man was confused, so he asked, “Old man, how is it that you are so happy when your heart is so ugly?” The old man replied, “In my life I have experienced love, pain, joy, and sorrow. You see this scar here? This is from my first love. Oh, how the sun shone so brightly on the days that she was mine. And that hole there! That is from the day that my mother died. You see young man, my heart is full! I have shared and received while you have only boasted of your clean heart. You have not known sorrow, therefore you cannot know true joy. You have not felt pain, therefore you cannot truly know love.”

The townspeople heard this and became intrigued by the old man. They rushed to him to hear his stories of love and joy, and pain and sorrow. The young man was left with no one to adore his “perfect” heart. He had no such stories. The townspeople were fascinated by the old man’s heart. The young man also began to realize that maybe it was not he who possessed the most beautiful heart. He went to the old man.

The young man looked at his heart, pulled off a small piece, and fit it into a hole in the old man’s heart. The old man gleamed with joy as his pulled off a small piece of his own heart and fit it into the hole of the young man’s. The piece did not fit perfectly and the color was off, but when the young man looked down at his blemished heart he was overwhelmed by it. He then went to the townspeople and began to give pieces of his heart to each of them, and some of them gave back pieces of their own. Slowly, the young man’s heart was left with little holes, misshapen, and scarred. The young man went to the old man and said, “I have now felt pain and sorrow. It has been hard. I have also felt joy and love! It has been amazing! I hope that someday my heart shall be as beautiful as yours.”

Our scars and missing pieces are what make us so beautiful. Those that have known true pain are more able to experience true joy. If we never saw the night, we would not know the beauty of the day, but that does not mean that the night is bad and the day is good. We need both to appreciate the other. Just as we need the dark to know the light, we need pain to know joy. Next time you find yourself questioning your situation, try asking yourself this, “What can I learn from this? What can I now appreciate more because of this experience?”

Be the old man. Make your heart “ugly,” and you might just make your life more beautiful.