Here’s the bad news:

Virtue isn’t a golden ticket to a pain-free life. Bad things happen to good people as often as they happen to bad people.

It seems unfair, but in the natural order of the world, suffering is random. To expect otherwise is to sentence oneself to despondency, disillusionment, bitterness, and anger.

Here’s the good news:

The magic power that comes with our humanity isn’t a shield protecting us from misfortune but an inner strength that helps us deal with it, overcome it, and learn from it so we can still find love, laughter, and joy despite it.

At our lowest moments, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. All we need is the faith and moral courage to find the spark within that, with just a puff of hope, can become a flame bright enough to show us the way out.

But what can we do if despair is feeding on the soul of someone we love?

We can’t carry their burdens or make their pain or grief go away, but we can be a friend so they don’t suffer or grieve alone.

Simply by being there – with a shared tear, a kind hug, or an outstretched hand – we can be a living answer to despair’s dark question: “How can I go on?”

In the midst of despair, being reminded that tomorrow is another day provides no comfort because it’s hard to believe tomorrow will be any better. But it will be. Tomorrow is the doorway to the future, and that’s where we’ll live the rest of our lives.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

* Here are a few more thoughts:

“Yes, bad things happen to good people, but so do good things – and they come with greater frequency and intensity. Virtues like honesty, love, compassion, and service create a moral gravity that attracts opportunities, rewarding relationships, and an enduring peace of mind that only comes to those who live worthy lives.”
– Michael Josephson

“We could bear any burden if we thought there was a meaning to what we were doing. Have I made it harder for people to accept their illnesses, their misfortunes, their family tragedies by telling them they are not sent by God as part of some master plan? Let me suggest that the bad things that happen to us do not have a meaning. They do not happen for any good reason which would cause us to accept them willingly. But we can give them a meaning.”
– Harold Kushner in Why Bad Things Happen to Good People

“The facts of life and death are neutral. We, by our responses, give suffering either a positive or a negative meaning. Illnesses, accidents, human tragedies kill people. But they do not necessarily kill life or faith. If the death and suffering of someone we love makes us bitter, jealous, against all religion, and incapable of happiness, we turn the person who died into one of the devil’s martyrs. If suffering and death in someone close to us brings us to explore the limits of our capacity for strength and love and cheerfulness, if it leads us to discover sources of consolation we never knew before, then we make the person into a witness for the affirmation of life rather than its rejection.
– Harold Kushner in Why Bad Things Happen to Good People

“God, who neither causes nor prevents tragedies, helps by inspiring people to help.”
– Harold Kushner in Why Bad Things Happen to Good People