“And after a while he returned to take her; and he turned aside to see the carcass of the lion, and behold, there was a swarm of bees in the body of the lion, and honey.” Judges 14:8
Many a times, our lives stink. It reeks of misfortunes and stagnancy. Sometimes, when we take a retrospect of our lives, all we see is the needless waste we made out of it. The only remains we have of it is the carcass.
The biblical Samson, during one of his usual adventures, tore apart with his bare hands a young lion which had attacked him. After a while, he chanced on the carcass of its attacker and deep inside it was a swarm of bees and…. honey. Indeed, there can be honey in a carcass!
Honey is sweet. A carcass stinks. No matter how smelly a carcass is, however, it can birth honey. No matter how unpleasant the carcass of an animal may seem, it is not useless in the food chain of life. Bees can make some honey therein. Something sweet can be borne out of something smelly.
Life has always had a way of hiding some fortunes in our misfortunes. It may always seem hard to understand but in every carcass of ours is some honey. Even in our rotten state, we are never useless in life’s food chain. There can still be honey in our carcass. There still can be some real sweetness in our bitterness!
Horatio G. Spafford could only birth his classic hymn “It is well” after he had been deluged with countless tragedies. Leland and Jane Stanford only imagined building Stanford University in 1885 after they had painfully lost their son, Leland Stanford Jr., to typhoid fever. Oftentimes, when life unleashes a lion at you, it knows there’s some good honey in its carcass that you or others need!
What happens to us doesn’t matter as much as our response to them. Our experiences don’t matter as much as our reaction towards such. Where others see impossibilities, we can still smell some possibilities. When others see themselves as a prey as a lion approaches, we can still smell some honey in its carcass. How we perceive what happens to us determines how we react to them. You cannot see the honey until you look beyond the carcass.
There’s an opportunity in every misfortune but oftentimes, our eyes are too teary to see them. There’s a great deal of goodness in every hard time we face… only if we can see a little beyond what everyone sees. Though life may hurl at us some hard challenges, in there may be some great opportunities. Most of life’s opportunities come in rugged clothes called challenges.
Every situation that makes you weep has an element within that can make you smile. There may be great lessons to learn. We can overturn our weaknesses into our strengths. They can be experiences we can share with others to overcome whatever they may be going through. We can harvest some honey in the carcasses of our lives for the benefit of others.
Regardless of how bitter our past may have being, we can take advantage of it and help others go through their own shade of bitterness. No matter the mistakes we may have done to make our lives stink, we can churn a good dose of honey out of it by making it an example for others to avoid such errors. No life is useless in the food chain of life. Others can feed on it. Others can learn some deep lessons out of it. It all starts with having a different perspective of that life!
There is something good about every situation we go through; no matter how bad that situation may seem. The weight of our failures doesn’t matter. There’s an equal measure of an opportunity even in those setbacks. Regardless how much we may have lost in a business adventure, there’s an equal opportunity of knowing, at least, one way that business will fail if anyone goes that path. There’s a gain in every pain if only we can search for it.
We all need to wear the mindset of positivity. We need to exude optimism. No matter the stones life hurls at us, we can still make strides. Life’s stones can either be stumbling blocks or stepping blocks depending on how we perceive them. When life lets its lions loose on you, it expects you, like Samson, to make a carcass out of them. Out of the carcass, is your honey!
Inside the bitter experiences is some honey. You may have not discerned it yet but with time, it will rear its head. Honey takes time to form. The sweetness in our bitterness takes a while to show up. Just give it time.
Every raw material goes through a process to become a product. So does our lives. Our difficult times take us through a process. It forms within us a priceless character of self-belief. It is through this process that our sweetness is formed. It is in these stages that our honey is prepared. We need the uncomfortable process to become the product we need to be.
Change your perspectives in life today. Nothing should break you. No opposition should let you give up. Like Samson, tear apart every lion life will unleash on you. Until you make a carcass out of it, you’ll never taste the honey within. Until you walk over your fears, your tears shall drown you.
No matter what you are going through, give life a smile. Hard times expose your strengths. Your days of mourning must expose your resilience because… there’s some honey in your carcass. Your breakthrough lies within the same challenge that is daring to break you apart. Brace yourself and face those lions. Congrats in advance. Cheers!
By Kobina Ansah
The writer is a playwright and Chief Scribe of Scribe Communications (www.scribecommltd.com), a writing company based in Accra. His play TRIBELESS is on Saturday, June 16th, 2018 at National Theatre.