Today is an ominous day. The recent history of today brings a stillness to many of the people around me. People manage though, pushing on because tomorrow will come.

There was much pain on this day. The loss that I have for my current love being away is nothing to what thousands of people suffered. I always ask this question to myself, hoping that I may get the same answer. "Why do we have to suffer?" It's a question that changes for everyone.

The pain that we experience is constantly a test of life. All life suffers. Show me something that lives that doesn't. Good luck on that. We suffer to survive. We suffer to to grow strong. We suffer because to suffer is to live. How cruel that sounds. "An easy life teaches nothing," I had on a fortune cookie once. To struggle is life. If we do not struggle then we do not understand life.

It is like this: A man does not know what happiness is without knowing sadness. Without out utter despair how can a man find true happiness? A constanty happy man does not understand that he is happy because he has nothing to compare his happiness to! In our deepest caverns, when we hide away from life because of pain, any seen is blinding. Then how bright the sun would be if we lived in total darkness! How can we know how dark the night is without ever being through a bottomless cavern? If those are both true, then how can a person compare joy and sorrow? It is a scale that balances out; Suffering on one side, joy on the other. I suffer now so that I can be happy with what I have later. How happy is the starving for a cracker! How satiating is the swollen tounge that drinks water! Through the trenches I will travel, so that when happiness does come, I can be all the more over joyed with the blessing!

People suffer to learn. Everything happens for a reason. If you fail to learn from the day, then the day was lost. Fight on, practice patience and endure. Keep going on, knowing that tomorrow is coming.

Andrew Adams