بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

I was in a very difficult period of my life and a friend of mine -God bless her- told me: “Now, you are confused. You see only the black part of life. Please, do me a favor. Take pen and paper and start to make a list. Separate the paper in two and put from one side the symbol of (+) and from the other the symbol of (-). Under these symbols, write the good and the bad think of the situation you are in. You will see that even now there are positive things in your life!”

I reject the idea, but in a moment, I said “why not?” and I took paper and pen.

I started writing, believing that I do something ridiculous and useless.

Of course I started with the (-). I wrote almost 10 parameters in a breath. And I continued. When my anger died down, I started to think what I can write in (+).

The fact, that there are things to write in (+) even in the darkest situations of your life, surprised me.

And finally I realized that the (+) was not only one thing. I couldn’t believe it. This “silly”, until this moment, list make me feel better. And the fact there was at least one positive thing in this hell, for me was a big surprise.

And after this a second and a third… “Every cloud has a silver line”. This is the English apodosis of the Greek proverb «ουδέν κακόν, αμιγές καλού».

When you try to climb a very difficult mountain, you haven’t kicked your own foot. It is not fair and it is not clever too.

This naïve kind of reaction in the difficulties -believe it or not- is very helpful.

It is a kind of facing the real dimension of the problem.

And the real dimension of a problem -except of some particular situations- it’s not as grave as we think.

When you will try to find the real word to describe a situation, it will help you to realize the size of the problem. For example, if you write the world “tragedy”, maybe after some seconds you’ll see that this word is too much!

Try to do it. It is a relief!