Bittersweet Symphony

The last few days I have heard the song Bittersweet Symphony being played quite randomly and each time it caught my attention I stopped, and began to ponder the bittersweetness of life. As I listened I thought about how life is a symphony of experiences, choices, relationships, moments, feelings and emotions. All of these can seem pretty bitter at times and at other moments, very sweet. We usually experience the bitter and the sweet separately. They seem mutally exclusive. And depending on how one views life and their experiences there can be more or less of either of these two realities. However, I am convinced that these two apparent polar opposite actualities in fact do occur together. They actually coexist at the same time, in the same moment that the experiencer is experiencing the unfolding event before them. I know from my own reflection that when I am in a situation where I am feeling anguish, there is also a kindness present as well. It takes a wider perspective and I have to step out of the personal agenda I am focused on creating and intentionally view the situation from many different angles. In doing this, a soft gentleness holds the harshness and the sweetness of life begins to permeate it all and change it. It becomes less hurtful, painful, and intrusive. Healing, allowing and acceptance flower in a place where only moments, days, weeks, or years before there seemed only to be rubbish and painful memories strewn. The symphony of life doesn't ask us to acknowledge only the sweetness and negate the bitterness, or live in either of these experiences exclusively. It is asking us to allow the gentle sweetness to soften the harshness and allow the bitterness to mold and give context to the sweetness. It is only here that we will begin to appreciate the gifts of both of these beautiful perspectives. When placed together in a partnership that is necessary for life to have meaning and depth these seemingly polar opposites that were once believed to be unreconcilable, begin to create the beautiful bittersweet symphony of your life and the rose is more glorious because of it's thorns.