In Taoism, there is a strong belief in Yin Yang – two opposite halves to a whole. We've all grown up learning these opposites. Good and bad. Night and day. Black and white. Those are pretty rudimentary, but what about real life events? The recent flooding in Louisiana and Bon Iver's new album; ISIS and the United States' Olympic basketball team winning gold. Now what if we took this to a even deeper personal level?
Life is often times described as a roller coaster; we have our highs and our lows. Lokai bracelets symbolize this way of thinking. Steven Izen, Founder of Lokai, installed the bracelets with one bead filled with water from Everest to represent our highs and one with mud from the Dead Sea to represent our lows. He envisioned this as a way to teach individuals that sometimes you can be on top of the world, and other times you are barely above it. Often times I find myself thinking of their motto, Stay hopeful – stay humble, because even in my own life, I desperately want to take a break from the upside-down loops, the jerking corners, and the bumpy track that is life. In times like this, it dawns on me that when I feel as low as the Dead Sea, I need to be hopeful that things will get better. More often than not, we all find joy in the roller coaster.
Robert Frost is my favorite poet of all time, and his Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening trumps all other poems. The last stanza informs the readers that the "woods are lovely, dark, and deep//but [he] has promises to keep//and miles to go before [he] sleeps." I've always believed that this poem alludes to the eye of the storm per say; that Frost is struggling with something, and he has to decide if he ought to continue on with his path or give into the pressures of life. He ultimately decides to follow through with whatever he is wrestling with because "he has promises to keep" and his path is far from over. We can relate this to our own lives in the sense that every day, we struggle with something, and it is up to ourselves to continue on or give in. Life can be hard, but if it wasn't, how would we grow? In Disney's Mulan, the Emperor of China says, "The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all."
It's hard sometimes to be hopeful and optimistic when life sucker-punched you in the face or slaughtered you in a game of dodgeball using lemons, but isn't that what makes life worth living? The ups and the downs? For a straight, smooth road never excites and is often times dreadfully boring. Although times may seem dark, there's light at the end of the tunnel. Stay hopeful when life disappoints you and stay humble when it exceeds your expectations.
