“You can’t always get what you want, but you have to grow anyways.”

These words spoken by pastor Carl Lentz during the Friday, January 26 Convocation really stuck with me. I’ll ashamedly admit: I am definitely one of the ones who tends to zone out during convocation, especially if the speaker is doing any form of preaching. I’m sorry: I lose interest, get distracted quite easily, and re-advert my attention to my phone. However, despite zoning in and out of Convocation, when this “quote” was spoken, I couldn’t help but write it down and ponder on it for the remainder of his speech. While the quote was specifically applied to Lentz’ theme of turning the page on your faith, the message can really be applied to all aspects of life.

“You can’t always get what you want…”

Despite being aware of the truth of this statement, we all still try to deny it.

I’m a control freak. I want to get what I want and have things go the way that I want them to. In fact, I thrive off of getting my way, and when things don’t go the way I want them to, frustration and anger ensues in me. The world suddenly stops if something doesn’t go as planned, and it becomes so easy to abandon all hope and give up when we feel as though we have lost control. But, the reality of it is, we can’t always get what we want. If we always got what we wanted, we probably wouldn’t be where we are today-whether it be a good place or a bad place.

We’ve all wanted things in our life that we now look back on and realize that receiving those wants wouldn’t have been good for us. What we may be wanting now may not even be good for us; so perhaps not always getting what we want isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

This isn’t to say that we will or should happily accept the times that things don’t go our way-I know for a fact that I will never be one to welcome changed plans with open arms. However, I think if we begin to see that things do and don’t happen for a reason, it will help us to see the greater good in the instances where things may not have gone as planned.

“…but we have to grow anyways.”

I appreciate how this part wasn’t phrased in a cheesy and optimistic manner, such as “but we should continue to grow,” or “we have to see the greater purpose.”

“We have to grow anyways”despite things not going our way.

Simply put in my “realist-with-a-touch-of-pessimist” words: when we don’t get our way, we have to suck it up and move on.

Again, this isn’t to say that we must adopt an attitude of positivity and force ourselves to put on a smile when we must tell ourselves to prosper on despite disrupted plans. However, we really only have two options in life: to grow or to decline, because remaining stagnant is almost impossible, as any choice, decision, or path we make will ultimately either aid in our growth or decline.

Perhaps it’s time to stop questioning why we don’t always get what we want and start thinking about what we are going to do when the inevitable instances of not getting what we want occur. So, which choice are you going to make when you don’t get what you want: decline or growth?