Rise

“Why Do We Fall?” I addressed the idea of this question in a previous blog. “Why Do We Fall?” was a question presented by Bruce Wayne’s father in the 2006 blockbuster “Batman Begins”. Thomas Wayne carries his son out of a cave entrance he has fallen into. As the two are walking back home, Thomas asks his son, Bruce, “why do we fall?…so that we can learn to pick ourselves back up.” In life we will fall. Life is full of challenges. Our life is going to carry hard times with it. It’s important we learn to rise when we fall, but how do we rise?

Do Not Fear

The first thing we must understand about rising up from a fall is not to be afraid of getting back up. When we fall it’s important we learn how to pick ourselves back up, rise. When we were younger and were learning to ride a bike we probably fell, we might have gotten hurt, and our immediate reaction was to stay away from that thing that hurt us. It’s natural when we are hurt we try to avoid that thing that hurt us, but if we never got back on that bike then we never would have learned to ride. When you fall don’t stay down, rise. See the importance of getting back up and trying again. Someone may have hurt you, but it doesn’t mean everybody is going to hurt you.

How Do We Rise?

The second thing we must focus on, when we are rising up, is how we are rising. When we are hurt we are changed, it’s fact. No one has ever been hurt emotionally and not carried a scar away from the situation. We often try to rise, but in a negative way. When someone hurts us, lies to us, mistreats us, when someone brings you to a fall, we often gain bitterness. We become bitter towards that person, relationships, friendships, we often become a colder harder person and don’t even realize it.

Bitterness

When we try to rise from a situation with bitterness as our armor, we are weighed down. We are changed more by how we react to pain than by the pain itself. We can become so distracted by our hurt that we give up our moral principles, we change our ideas, we gain new beliefs that in turn corrupt us. It is the most common factor in coming back from a painful situation and it’s such a toxic change that we rarely realize it has happened.

Bitterness isn’t something that is developed overnight, it builds and grows with time. It’s also something that will not go away until we address the issue and consciously seek its destruction. How do we rise from situations where we are hurt? How do we come back from an unfair situation? How do we rise in the right way?

1. Replay
We have to first replay the event. Consciously take time to sit and replay the entire situation that hurt you, from start to finish. Pinpoint what went wrong, how, and what lead to this moment. When we can watch the situation from the beginning to the present then we can more rationally dissect the problem.

2. Council
The second thing to do after you have replayed the situation that hurt you is to seek council. It’s important that we seek the advice and leadership of those that we trust and respect. That may be a parent, a friend, a pastor, a teacher, whoever it is it’s important we confide our problem to them. You look up to this person, or persons, for a reason, so when you are honest with them and express the situation to them they can give you advice on to how to approach and rise from the dilemma.

3. Time
The third thing to do is take time. Time allows us to think, rationalize, and grow. You need time specifically to be away from the person or problem that has brought you to fall. Time can be the most helpful tool to beginning to rise.

4. Forgive
The final thing to do, is forgive. Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting, but it does mean that you no longer are carrying the burden, that person brought on you, against them. It’s hard to forgive someone when they hurt us, but it’s vital to rising up from our fall and rising stronger than before. When we don’t forgive we are still living in our burden and we can’t let it go. Also, Forgiveness is more than just a statement it’s a change. We can’t just say we forgive someone and still talk bad about them, we can’t forgive and still hold bitterness.

When we rise we make a choice to forgive. When we rise we make a choice to live better lives. When we rise we show the world we aren’t subjects of our fall. Use your hurt, your burden, your sadness, your fall, as a tool to help others rise and to live a life happier and stronger than before.

“Why do we fall, so we can learn to pick ourselves back up.”

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