Michael F. DuBois

There has always been this idea that a “good” life means that everything has to be perfect. That, the people who live these kinds of lives must be happy all the time, must never feel sadness, must never get stuck in hard situations.

I don’t believe anybody lives a life like that. And I also believe, that if somebody does live like that, its not as good of a life as it seems. If somebody was born with happiness and died feeling that exact same happiness, never feeling anything else in between, how would they ever know what they were feeling in the first place?

I look at my world, I think about who I am, and I pick out the darkest part of my life right now. My Mother has breast cancer. Now I’m being a little selfish by saying that its the darkest part of MY life, because I really don’t know what she goes through everyday, or how it feels, or anything for that matter. All I know, is that it’s on my mind everyday. Its not that I dwell on it, but its always there, in the back of my head, just as any illness is for anybody. What I am trying to say here, the point I’m trying to make, is that Ive learned more about happiness from my mothers cancer than I ever could have from any fairy tale. Without sadness in our lives, how would we really know what it feels like to be happy? These things happen in our lives to prove to us that there is still hope, that there is still love. How could we ever appreciate spring if we never knew the long winter the stood before it, appreciate love without feeling heartbreak, light without darkness?

To be able to appreciate life rather than just have it, to me, makes it truly a good one. For although sadness may come, there is hope in the fact that happiness will seem that much more beautiful when we finally do decide to feel it.