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| The Bright Side: With every setting sun, spring draws a little closer. |
I couldn't believe my ears. Amy was not just pregnant, but expecting two at the same time! It was wonderful news and I, like all her other friends, couldn't contain my delight over the crackly long distance line between Paris and Australia.
Despite our excitement, it seemed Amy would be in for a wild ride. Other friends of mine had recently given birth and the harrowing experiences they recounted were enough to send chills down my spine. One friend in particular described to me how she felt very uncomfortable being amongst crowds for several months after the childbirth. She said that after one has experienced such pain, to contemplate the collective suffering involved in giving birth to all the people you might see on a crowded street is almost too much to bear.
It was humbling indeed to think that my very existence owed a debt to such agony and Amy's fabulous announcement hammered home the message: it seemed that in order to grow, even in positive directions, there is always a degree of suffering involved. Whether it is growth on a personal well-being level (suffering a fitness or flexibility regime); growing as a family (Amy giving birth to twins); or even growing on a professional level (for example a lawyer studying hard to pass a bar exam), there is always an associated element of hardship or adversity that has to be overcome.
Here finally was a clue as to why I was bothering to continue with the hard slog of Ramadan. My suffering from an exterior (and French) perspective appeared non-sensical and masochistic, but the growth I was experiencing showed there was method to the madness. What's more, the very next day I was about to discover why Ramadan might just be a little more sensible than some other forms of self-imposed albeit growth-achieving torment.
