The journey we take each day is a precarious one.  The balance of duty, responsibility, fun, and happiness comes at the cost of time and effort.  We wake up, groom ourselves and any children we have, we feed ourselves, then begin the chores of the day.  Whether it be milking cows, or washing dishes, our day starts with work.  Juggling schedules for multiple children and adults is worked in as the day really takes off.  Adults have to work to bring in money, take care of their homes, and give a bit of themselves to whatever cause they feel necessary.  Children are required to learn, understand, and grow.  Each day is a small sliver of these requirements and should build on the one before.  

What happens when this is lost?  When life spins and spirals out of control?  When suddenly everything that made sense yesterday is senseless today?  We falter, tumble, and eventually fall, down to the bottom.  The bottom is an interesting place, there is despair, anger, hurt, humiliation, terror, rage, and hate.  But also, for the first time since that first stumble, hope. 

And it is hope that we cling to for everything.  Hope for a better everything.  Tomorrow, life, job, love, understanding.  Hope comes and lifts us up, encourages us to find the ladder and climb out of the hole we fell into.  Hope drives us to keep moving from rung to rung until we reach the top and see the ground we used to walk upon everyday.  Where things are normal and the same. 

But after hitting the bottom, is life ever the same?  You now know new things, have a new capacity for measuring negative emotions, new skills to aid in preventing stumbles and stopping the fall.  You now know where that ladder is, so as you fall you can reach out and stop yourself.  You no longer spiral out of control.  

Knowing this, can one ever truly be sad to "hit rock bottom"?  That is where hope is.  And the journey may start in a scary way, but it almost never ends up in the same place.  And this makes that scary seem not so. 

So we should take comfort that we are human and that we have the ability to bounce around in our lives.  We are able to taste both failure and success within our lives, and both states of being are equally good for you.  

Midnight ramblings are the best.