They Came to Ferry Me Across

Lately I've come to understand something strange.

When we're sad, and lost in the fog, we should actually be grateful to the people who brought us that sadness. Because they came to ferry us across.

Looking back over my life, I've found that nearly every time I changed, every time I grew, it happened in that sad, foggy state.

I used to be so afraid of it. The moment sadness came, I wanted to hide, to get out of it as fast as I could. But later I realized that it was precisely that sadness that pushed me out of my old self, and drove me toward somewhere deeper. Without those hard times, I might still be standing in the same place.

So the people who brought me sadness weren't there to harm me. They came to ferry me across. Like a boat, they came to carry me to a higher place.

Once I understood this, my relationship with sadness changed. It's no longer something I fear. When sadness comes now, I can almost say to myself, another change is on its way, let me see where it wants to take me this time.

This is also why I love this wolf by Gordon Gu.

It's made of glacier crystal. Looking at it, I think of how a wolf is born to live in the hardest places. Snow and wind, wilderness, hunger, solitude. Its toughness and strength didn't fall from the sky. They were ground out of it, little by little, by those hardest of conditions.

Made of glacier crystal, it looks as though it's just walked out of a snowstorm, the cold still on its body, and yet it stands there, steady, with light in its eyes, and strength.

I think people are the same. The real strength in us is grown out of hard times too.

So now I can be truly grateful, for the hard times, and for the people who came to ferry me across. It's they who let me become, again and again, a better self.

— Marie, Founder of Lyfairs