Everything happens for a reason.

I'm not always good at speaking for myself. The benefit of living in the year 2009 is that by now anything you've got to say has been said, and it's been said way better than you'd have ever said it yourself. You see, for me, that's good because I can't always put into words the way I feel.
On the other hand if you are Fall Out Boy or any of those pussy whipped new bands on the radio it's probably not a good thing. It probably makes selling music a lot harder and that's why your target audience is a bunch of teeny boppers who smoke and think they are hardcore because they wear leg warmers over their skinny jeans and bangles on their wrists. You see, THEY don't know it's all been done before. Parents don't have the time to educate their children because they are too busy suing the Disney channel: After all if Miley Cyrus's shorts weren't so short their 16 year old daughter wouldn't have gotten pregnant.
There you have it. The benefits and downfalls of 2009. It all depends on who you are.

This is not at all the point of my post.
What is the point? You ask. I thought you never would.

Let's allow Garth Brooks to say it for me:

The Dance

And now, I'm glad I didn't know
the way it all would end,
the way it all would go.
Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
but I'd have had to miss the dance.

As it turns out (and I was a bit horrified to find out) this is a excerpt from a country song which I just couldn't bring myself to listen to. I found this piece in a Internet message board I frequent when one of the posters started the thread "Favorite quotes, poems, lyrics." Unfortunately I can't sit through more than 13 seconds of country without wanting to inflict severe bodily harm on myself. However, that is no reason to disregard such wise and beautiful words. This is one of my favorite concepts and one which keeps me from jumping off a cliff when I have a bad day. You always have to remember that life is both good and bad combined. Life is not supposed to be all bright lights and lollipops. Misfortune may feel terrible at the time but eventually you will appreciate the things you learned from the experience.
Thankfully for my ears, The eels put it in a way more musically acceptable form:


This song makes my heart happy. It's probably one of my favorites. I wanted to post the real video but YouTube wouldn't let me. This one came with some good illustrative pictures. I definitely urge you to watch the real thing because, well, Eels is/are the shit.

It may seem like the bad comes all on it's own because the world is out to get you, but it's not the case. Here, to prove that everything I say is BS: Take the song Bless the Broken Road by Rascal Flatts. It's one of my favorite love songs. I'm not so in love with the way the singer sounds but the message is too important to me. I know I said I hate country but there's an exception to every rule, right? Besides, Garth Brooks is totally an old man sitting on his porch with a banjo and a twig sticking out of his mouth. His style is totally old school and traditional, Rascal Flatts has a mild contemporary sound that makes them bearable, ok? Whatever, I know what I'm talking about. Excuses to contradict myself aside...
I'm not going to post a video so that's up to you but it's the best way to say that the bad is a part of life. The broken road led me to you. The bad was there for a reason. So appreciate life, always. The good, the bad, the ugly. And remember that if you are experiencing misery you are still living. Man, you're REALLY living.