The whole concept of balance is the thought that there are two forces pulling at you to both go their way. If you follow one, the other gets out of sync causing you to tumble away from it and vice versa. So you do your best to stay in the middle enjoying the best of both worlds. One place where this analogy falls a little flat is when bad things happen. After all, who would normally choose to experience bad things? Still we know that it will happen and hopefully, we are balanced enough to keep it from completely dominating our lives.

Truthfully, experiencing bad things can help. At the very least, it reminds us to be thankful for what we have. In a book my wife read there were swings at a playground. Near the swings was a small plaque saying that the swings were donated in memoriam by the parents of a little girl who used to love swinging there. The book then went on to say that any parent who read the plaque would immediately go and hug their child. It is a sad tale but you can imagine the positive effect that plaque has. For just one moment in time a parent knows exactly how much their children mean to them. Truly we should always remember things like how important the people in our life our but things get in our way and we often forget. It can take a tragedy to force us to slow down and truly experience life with our loved ones.

One of the final Queen albums, Innuendo, is full of things like this. Picture this, Freddie Mercury knows he is dying. His goal is to create as many songs as possible before he goes so he works hard at it. The band had been experiencing some fractures before this news came out but now were unified together with purpose. In between each take of each song, Freddie would down vodka to help numb the pain. If you listen to the songs on this album you really get awestruck how much emotion he put into these songs. One is called the “Show Must Go On” and he’s singing about how he is falling apart inside but outside the show still goes on. In the song “Days of Our Lives” the character is reminiscing with his significant other about their life together and that although things have changed, he still loves her. Everytime I hear that album it reminds me to take advantage of the time I have with my friends and family and cherish the moments I have.

So while no one wants something bad to happen, it is the nature of life that it will. Sometimes the bad thing will serve as inspiration to others, like the plaque at the swings. Other times it will strengthen you for the future as you can always look back at that experience and know that if you can survive that, you can survive anything. So in the words of Freddie Mercury, “Into every life, a little rain must fall.”