Some of the best things that have ever happened to us wouldn’t have happened to us, if it weren’t for some of the worst things that have ever happened to us.

South African philosopher Mokokoma Mokhonoana has a gift for turning pain into perspective. His line — “Some of the best things that have ever happened to us wouldn’t have happened to us, if it weren’t for some of the worst things that have ever happened to us.” — distills a timeless paradox: our greatest growth often begins in discomfort. The hardships we resist most fiercely are sometimes the very events that redirect our lives toward meaning, strength, or deeper compassion.

This reflection isn’t about glorifying suffering but about finding its hidden utility. The Stoics called it amor fati — to love one’s fate — the practice of embracing not only what we want but also what we didn’t choose. When we look back with hindsight, we often see that life’s detours were not deviations at all, but the necessary path to becoming who we are.

To live with this mindset is to trust that pain has purpose — that even the worst chapters can become the soil for the best things to grow.

-- This one is for my good friends, Fleetwood and Fallon Mathews.