Everyone sees both the good and the bad in life. Some days are going to be better than others; some days are going to be worst than others. I think that is common knowledge. However, I feel as though many people do not understand how short a human life truly is.

A friend told me this:

If you were to put all of the earth’s history into a movie, from the beginning until now, the movie would be about eight hours long. Scientifically speaking, dinosaurs roamed the earth for 165 million years. Well, those 165 million years would take up the same amount of time in the eight-hour movie as it would take you to snap your fingers.

Think about that for a second.

We as humans are on earth for a mind-blowingly short span of time. Our 90 or so years compared to the 165 million of dinosaurs are technically nothing. The time between our birth and death is microscopic compared to the rest of history.

Now think about that for a second.

That shouldn’t matter, though. Don’t believe that the span of your life should dictate your ability to experience the beauty this huge world holds or live life to its full potential. Your life is still a life that needs to be lived. What you should understand, though, is how precious the good times are and you need to understand how precious the bad times are.

This is why life is a tulip.

During the day, tulips are open, welcoming in the sunlight. During the night, tulips are closed, hiding away from the darkness. However, during the day when a cloud covers the sun or the rain begins to come or the temperature begins to drop, the tulip becomes confused. The tulip believes this change is the darkness, something bad, and forgets that even with this change, it is still the day.

Here is the metaphor.

When tulips are open, it represents the precious goodness in life.

When tulips are closed, it represents the precious badness in life.

When tulips are confused, it represents the bad in life that should be good.

As a human, there is too little time to be the confused tulip. The confused tulip closing because a cloud is covering the sun, hid away from the precious goodness the daylight holds. The confused tulip made something bad of something that should have been good. She didn't understand why anything bad was happening, like the darkness, and she hid in spite of it.

Think about that for a second.

What I am trying to say is there is too little goodness in your life to create a problem that doesn’t need to exist. Humans need to understand that they will experience both the dark and the light in the day, and the night, but life is too short to make a problem out of nothing. We need to appreciate the little goodness our life has instead of creating darkness out of the daylight.

Yes, there will be times a cloud covers the sun where the cloud represents legitimate badness. But that is why there is no point in wasting the precious goodness of the lights in life to be overcompensated by some problem you created.

Appreciate the goodness in life, appreciate the badness in life but don’t waste the light by hiding away in a superficial darkness. Don’t be the confused tulip.

Think about all of that for a second.