Look for the Silver Lining

A few weeks ago, a thunderstorm with over 30mph winds blew through our city. While I was lucky to maintain power, my parents who live across town weren’t so lucky. As my mom and young nephew looked on, an enormous tree behind the house blew clear over, falling directly onto a power line. The electric cables connected to their house broke free, exposing several live wires. Obviously, with there no longer a way for any electricity to physically get to their house, the power went out.

It was, as you can imagine, a bit of a “life interrupter.” Over the next week, their plans and projects all went on hold as they were forced to turn their attention to:

1. Communicating with their local energy supplier about having the power lines repaired.
2. With no generator, transporting all their perishable food over to yours truly’s refrigerator 😉
3. Getting quotes and coordinating to have the tree and related debris removed from their property.
4. Repairing the fence in their backyard, one that enclosed and protected my mom’s beloved hosta plants from munching deer in the area.

Where could be the silver lining in all of THAT, right?

Well, as it turns out, there were many.

About a week after the incident, I went over to my parent’s house for dinner. I’d been relieved to hear that their power lines were back up and electricity was back on. In between bites of mashed potato, I said to my mom, “I’m just so sorry you’ve had to deal with all this.”

“Oh, it’s OK,” she replied. “As it turns out, there have been some great silver linings in it all.”

I was quite eager to hear exactly what these silver linings were. Truthbetold, I was already getting an idea for a future blog post in my mind 🙂

As my mom relayed to me over the next several minutes, in addition to the inconveniences listed above, the following benefits also unexpectedly arose:

1. An old connector box was replaced with a new one, and their internet service became faster as a result.
2. While repairing the “hosta sanctuary” fence, in order to avoid having to purchase more rails, my dad decided to alter the house-facing side of the fence, allowing on-lookers on the back porch to enjoy a taller, much-improved view of the hosta plants within.
3. Although the tree and its debris were largely on my parent’s property, a neighbor offered to split the cost with them, and in communicating with her, my mom felt she made a new friend in the neighborhood.
4. My dad, an architect/builder, ended up making a small art installation piece for the backyard with the leftover broken rails from the fence!

So, as you can see, a lot of good came out of this seemly bad occurrence.

Have storm clouds passed over your life recently? Perhaps it rained or perhaps it poured. Perhaps some gusts of wind even blew down a tree or two. But maybe, just maybe, if you look closely and think on it for a little while, there is a silver lining there to be found.

In closing, I’ll leave you, most appropriately, with this song from jazz vocalist Chet Baker, “Look for the Silver Lining (And Try to Find the Sunny Side of Life)”.

Enjoy 🙂

PS: For more on positivity from the Ellanyze blog, check out Three Great Websites For When You Need Cheering Up or How to Find Happiness Again: I Bet You Haven’t Tried This.