Cats & Dogs

"We can have facts without thinking but we cannot have thinking without facts." - John Dewey

"Let us take things as we find them: let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not. We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them." - John Henry Cardinal Newman

It's true. When it rains; it pours. There are those times in one's life where everything seems to be going wrong and no matter what you try, it just doesn't get better. There's no umbrella that will keep you dry from the downpour of the injustice that is life. It just keeps coming and the waters rise -- you feel yourself begin to slip under -- the end is near -- but then there is that moment; that glimmer of hope -- where the rain lets up, the waters calm and you see the sun -- you feel the warmth and then it happens -- the lightening strikes and the tsunami begins. That's the moment you see it, the true unfairness that exists.

It's at these moments that one truly questions themselves and all they embody. Doubts in your mental and spiritual stability surface while questions of your character and being resonate inside and your emotions seem to be failing you at every corner. You realize that no one is going to save you; it's your own strength that has to carry you and if you don't muster up the courage to swim hard -- you will drown.

Here's where you call me pessimistic. Here's where I call you a fool. While optimism and hope go hand-in-hand; pessimism and realism are two different things. I face the facts. While most dwell in the delusions of hope and faith (only to be crushed by them later); I prepare myself for the truth. For instance: A woman finds a lump in her breast. It may be nothing and that's what people will assume and think while ignoring that fact that it may not be. Then when it's discovered it is indeed cancer, they're all shocked and horrified. But then they move onto the next facade thinking everything will be ok. And when she dies they're grief stricken. They should have faced reality in the first place and prepared themselves for possibility of the inevitable. Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't hope -- but don't ignore that facts. The cold hard truth. This is life people, and it's unfair, face it.