“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only Love can do that”

-Martin Luther King jr

“We’ve got a mind of our own so go to hell if what your thinking isn’t right. Love would never leave us alone, A-yin the darkness there must come out to light”

-Bob Marley, from the song Could You be Loved

Yesterday we examined the second part of Martin Luther King jr’s quote. Today I not only want to focus on the first part, but I threw in a lyric from Bob Marley as well. I did this for two reasons. One, they are both strong influences on my way of thinking and two, in this case they are discussing a similar point. In life we will always have periods of darkness. My goal in my own life as well as the goal of this blog and my upcoming book is to make sure those periods happen less often and with less severity. That being said, there will still be periods were our outlook is bleak. There are times when we shall hear from others how bad it is. This usually goes into overload near an election. Still as we discussed yesterday heated debates are not the answer. So what is the answer. The answer can be found in these two quotes. I have experienced this in my own life as well. About 5 years ago I was in a dark place both professionally and personally. I would’ve stated how neither situation was fair. How all my hard work and effort wasn’t being rewarded fairly. In hindsight I probably would have had a lot of people agree with me. Where would that have gotten me though? Standing around unemployed with a group of people nodding their heads in agreement as to how bad my situation was. Which would have only made me feel worse. I’ll be honest, I did stand around and bitch for a few days. It helped me get some things off my chest. Still for a man who follows and admires the likes of the gentleman above it became obvious that was not going to get me anywhere. So I decided with my ‘extra time off’ I would help a few more days at the meal program I worked at. Normally I helped once a month, but I did three days that week. Not only did it help me feel better that I was able to help others. Which, by the way, is one of the best cures for feelings of depression. It also humbled me. I was able to see the struggles far worse than my own that a lot of these people were facing. Some of them only children. I decided right then and there to be a light in the darkness. It has led to the creation of this blog, my book, a whole new circle of friends and many other amazing events I can’t even list here. The lesson? Sometimes our world becomes dark so we are forced to develop and show the world our light