A Slice of Life: Good or Bad

Volume 3, Track 3: Good or Bad.
Producer and Narrator: Eugene Loh, Mediacorp 938 Live.
"A lot of unhappiness and stress in our lives is brought about by our perception
that certain events are good and others are bad. We have an endless supply of
such labels and we tag them on freely.
We get a promotion, good. We get fired, bad.
We manage to buy the last tickets for a sellout performance, good.
We missed the plane, bad.
This is beginning to sound like Animal Farm, isn't it?
The fact is how do we know for sure if something is so distinctly
fortunate or unfortunate?
Everything in life is connected so intricately that any one event could
have an infinite number of causes and effects.
The following story illustrates why we should not be too quick to assume
that a particular occurrence is for the better or for the worse.
Two sailors ran into each other in a pub over a few beers one of the men
told the other about his last voyage: "After a month at Sea," he said,
"we discovered our masts had been eaten through by termites! Almost
nothing left of them!"
"What a bummer," said the second sailor.
"Well, that's what I thought at first too," the first sailor said
" but it turned out to be good luck. As soon as we took the sails down
to fix the masts, we were hit by a squall so sudden. It's so
hard it would surely have blown us over if our sails were up at the time."
"How lucky, oh that's exactly what I thought at the time too. But because our
sails were down, we couldn't steer ourselves and because of the wind we were blown
onto a reef. The hole in the hall was too big to fix and we were stranded."
"This bad luck indeed, well that's what I thought too when it first happened but
we all made it to the beach alive, and had plenty to eat. But now, here's the real
kicker while we were on the island whining about how terrible fate we discovered
a buried treasure." The story ends there, but it could have easily turned into the never ending story!
Life is uncertain. Things happen.
For reasons unbeknownst to us, there is no way of knowing for sure
that a particular occurrence is good or bad.
So, instead of dwelling on the negative and getting all upset about
it why not have faith that all things happen for good reasons"
@NLB: catalogue.nlb.gov.sg/search/c...