Those who know what's wrong with them and take care of themselves accordingly will tend to live a lot longer than those who consider themselves perfectly healthy and neglect their weaknesses. So, in that sense at least, a weakness of some sort can do you a big favour, if you acknowledge that it's there. ~~ The Tao of Pooh

I've been searching so long for a way to say this in a meaningful way and here Benjamin Hoff says it beautifully through the wonderful way Pooh sees the world. The story goes something like this...

Once upon a time this thing happened. It was a big thing and I thought or didn't think I'd ever get past it. It coloured my days and it coloured my nights and made everything purple and gray. One day, I noticed a pink lining to the purple and gray. The next day, there was a little more. Until so on and so forth, the pink was joined by blue and when enough of the blue sky came through, then the clouds became clear.

Perhaps the story isn't so very clear but the point is that without the Big Thing that happened, I would never have learned to look for the silver lining, the pink, the blue.. I would never have noticed a difference from one to another and now because of the Big Thing, I'll always be able to find shapes of clouds within the gray.