Ain't life funny.

During my youthful idiot days I like a lot of other youthful idiot’s was convinced that the streets of London were paved with gold. Of course I found out that they were paved with anything but, and so I found myself disappointed and penniless hitchhiking my way back home. On this occasion it was rather more hike than hitch and it took the better part of four days to get back up north. On the evening of the third day I found myself sat on a hill overlooking a motorway service station just outside Manchester, cold, hungry, and tired.

The smell of food wafted over to me from the services restaurant and changed the hunger to an unbearable ache. I couldn’t walk anymore that night, so I had climbed the hill to scout the surrounding area for a place to bed down, I couldn’t see anything that looked even remotely inviting.

As I sat there head on my knees the wind rustled the grass around my feet. I looked up and westward, the sky was turning dirty blue to black, and in the distance dark rain clouds were rolling toward me. The wind blew stronger and whistled, it was almost a taunt. At the bottom of the hill where it met the road was a motorway sign with scaffolding round it, and it was lit by a propane light that gave of some heat, not much but it was better than nothing. At that moment I thought life couldn’t get any worse than it was right then. The rain started as I snuggled down for the night, and crying from the cold and rain I fell asleep.

One thing is true, you can learn something from every event in your life, in this case I thought it couldn’t get any worse, but I found out it could. What balances negative experience is that at times in your life when you think it doesn’t get any better than this. It does.