Blindsided
Life has a way of sneaking up on you and smacking you in the face. Sometimes that is good, but a lot of times it wakes you to something more serious. We see it coming at times, and other times it blindsides us like a linebacker. You have intentions of staying focused, then a freight train hammers you sending shock waves to every part of your body. In an instant, everything changes - your vision blurs, pain flashes, you feel yourself falling, and the worst part, you are powerless to stop it.
It may feel like everything is going in slow motion, which just seems to exaggerate the pain or the shock. At some point, you eventually stop fighting, it is easier, isn't it? Why should you fight it? Why should you prolong the inevitable? You had set things or people in place to protect you, but they failed. You begin to rationalize that it wasn't your fault. You get angry.
James Thurber was an American author, cartoonist, and playwright. When Thurber was seven years old, he and one of his brothers were playing a game of William Tell, when his brother shot James in the eye with an arrow. He lost that eye, and the injury later caused him to become almost entirely blind. He was unable to participate in sports and other activities in his childhood because of this injury, but he developed a creative mind, which he used to express himself in writings.
Ultimately going blind, James Thurber had every reason to be angry at his life, and I guarantee you he didn't plan on going blind at an early age; but that didn't stop him. He refused to look at his past in anger, or his future in fear. He looked around him and said, this is what I can do, I'm gonna do it, no matter what.
"Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness." - James Thurber
In our own lives, when something blindsides us, we let it take control - we live in fear. If every person lived their life as a James Therber or any number of other people who got knocked down but manage to get back up again, this world would be a completely different place.
Embrace each moment, the good and the bad. Don't look ahead in fear or behind in anger. Your circumstance does not define your future or who are, you do.