Thank goodness for bad times. I don’t remember when I first saw this sentence or one very similar to it. Still, I do remember thinking it was a screwy sentence. Who would want to be thankful for bad times? I suspect this sentence or the thought behind it is very old. There is a question that is very similar to it. “How do you know you are living in good times if you’ve never seen bad times?” At first glance, these sentences seem to be metaphysical gobbledygook. Stop and think about a bad time in your life – now a good time. How do they feel to you?
Perhaps, I should explain a bit more. Let’s say for as long as you can remember, you have had cornflakes for breakfast. You had milk with them. You even had a bit of sugar to sweeten them. Are they the “best” breakfast you can have? If all you ever had for breakfast are cornflakes, how can you judge if another breakfast might be better or even worse than the cornflakes? The truth is you need something to compare the breakfast of cornflakes to judge it against other forms of breakfast. How about an egg easy over, a couple of slices of bacon, and some toast? If you have only ever had cornflakes for breakfast, you can’t say much about the other breakfast.
Let’s go back to the opening sentence – “Thank goodness for bad times.” It is a good time right now? I assume you will say it’s not a good time because of the Covid virus. Few people will argue with that view of the present moment. More people have died in this country than the number of casualties our country had in World War II. If that weren’t enough, many jobs have disappeared. In most cases, we can’t even go to the movies for a bit of distraction. Thanks to the vaccines, we can see the end of the Covid virus is near.
When that happens, we will be free of the Covid virus’s fear as instilled in us. We can go to the movies. We can go out to eat. We can have friends over. It will feel like good times. Why? Because we will remember the bad time we are currently going through and compare it to the new happy moment. Thank goodness for bad times.
