By Alec Hogg
Enjoyed a business meeting yesterday with an old acquaintance who has been through the mill, but is now bouncing back strongly. Our interaction was a reminder of how life is not about how many times one gets knocked down. But how we get back up.
Challenges are learning opportunities. The greater the difficulty, the more grateful we should be for being able to tackle them. In my experience, when reflecting on such testing occasions, none arrived without a reason.
Almost 2 000 years ago, Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius reasoned that human beings are souls occupying corpses. And that once these bodily vessels no longer fit their purpose, the souls return from whence they came.
Following Aurelius through to the logical conclusion, when souls do return to wherever they came from, they will surely want to share lessons learnt. I like that. It gives purpose to our existence. And puts challenges into perspective – things to be welcomed, not feared.
