It’s dark and cloudy. The rain is hammering against the windows and you can practically see your breath. Today’s weather reflects exactly how you feel. It’s a miserable, depressing day. Your life has been cluttered with problems and your pessimistic thoughts have been weighing you down for the past few years. The only difference between you and the weather is that the weather changes and yet your feelings stay the same. You can see the blue sky off in the distance physically, but not emotionally. You just don’t see your weather clearing up any time soon.
This afternoon you are to get on a flight to Nebraska for a business trip. You feel even more depressed as you pack your bags for what is, in your opinion, a waste of time. All you can think of is everything that you could be getting accomplished in the next week if you were home, not in the middle of nowhere. You figure, though, that you can survive the next seven days but can only hope to stay sane while doing so.
Hours later after monotonously waiting in the never-ending lines in the airport, you are sitting in the uncomfortable seat that’s on the verge of breaking behind the guy who has already reclined his as far as it will go. You have never been in a tin can so small and it brings you to contemplate the wonderful possibility of it falling out of the air. You have pretty much no personal space and are extremely uncomfortable in the middle seat of your row between two men who can barely fit into their own seats and are starting to take up yours. You now think of how tedious the flight will be until your train of thought shifts back to the problems you have been having in your life in general. All of the bills you have stacking up and the little money you have to pay them. Your car that needs more maintenance than there are mechanics to fix its problems. The fact that you just can’t keep up with life and all that it presents you with.
You finally land and, after sitting in the plane for hours on end, you make it into the airport. Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse it does. On top of all the problems that you already have, you encounter just one more bump in the road. You discover that your luggage didn’t make it on the same flight as you, so you are now stuck in the middle of nowhere with barely any possessions. The people in the airport tell you that they are trying their best to locate your things, but in your mind, it’s another lost cause. You can just ask yourself if it can get any worse.
Seven days of monotonous work pass by. You still have no luggage and there isn’t a single person who works for the airline that knows where it is. By now, you forget about that hurdle and move on to the next one that gets in your way. You pack up the new clothes that you bought into the new luggage that you also purchased as a result of your missing belongings. Your credit card happened to be in your luggage that is now gone, so you must pay for everything with the cash you brought. Because of this, you don’t have enough money to buy your plane ticket to get back home. You arrange for a cab to bring you to the nearest bus station. The ride there is far shorter than you expected. This makes you happier momentarily. That is until you figure out that that could only mean the bus ride will be even longer than you initially intended and hoped for. You arrive at the bus station with just enough time to buy a ticket and find your seat.
As you climb the stairs on the packed bus you have a frown on your face. You you’re your feet as you walk down the aisle of a bus numbered 24 to the only empty seat, towards the back. You sit down and as you stare out the foggy window in anticipation of the uncomfortable ride ahead, a slightly older lady makes her way towards you and takes the unoccupied seat directly next to you. You are not in the mood for any human contact or conversation whatsoever, so you continue to blankly stare out of the icy window. The woman tries to strike up a conversation with you by asking why you look so upset. She decides to try and make you feel better. You sigh and slowly turn towards her, humoring her. She tells you of a time in her life when she was in a similar situation as you. She was once depressed because of hard times. This catches your attention and you decide that you might actually benefit from listening her. You learn that she was poor, she lived in her car for a short time, she could never land a job, and there was no one at all in her life to help her. After quite some time of being exposed to the hardships that the lady has faced, she gives you some valuable advice. Look at the positives in everything.
. . . . . . . .
It’s been a year since you were sitting on that bus talking to that complete stranger when you learned that very important lesson. You never did catch her name and you regret it every day. You just wish that you could thank her for making your life so much better.
You open your eyes after a good night’s sleep, sit up, and think. You think about your life. You think about all the problems you’ve ever had. You think about your past. Your experiences. Your troubles. Your hardships. You just think. You ask yourself. Why? If you asked yourself this question any time in the past, you would feel sorry for yourself. You would have created more problems for yourself and you would have made everything in your life seem even worse. Now, everything’s changed. You look out the window and see the beautiful sky as you hear the chirping of the birds that woke you up just outside your window. Why? Why did you drag yourself down all the time? Your entire life up until now made no sense to you. But the past is the past and you can’t weigh yourself down thinking about it.
Within the past year, starting from the second you took a step off of bus number 24, you turned your life around. The luggage that never made it with you on your flight was behind you, the car that needed fixing was in the past, and the pessimistic thoughts that ran through your head were no longer there. There are always bills on the table and the problems keep coming, but you don’t see them as problems. Every time you were ever optimistic about any situation, you knew you could get through it. All because of that one time, that one conversation, that one bus ride, that one lady, that one sentence she told you. Her exact words on that dismal day still stay with you, still mean something to you. Even on days when the sun is out and there are no clouds in sight. That one little sentence she gave to you right before you stepped off the bus, never to see her again. Your life will always be great as long as you remember those three little words. Don’t stop believing.
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