Contributed By: Alice Sikora
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Alice Sikora is originally from Toms River, New Jersey, and is an English Major that now spends most of her day doing statistical research for Stockton University. (Go figure.) She finds her hope in nature, poetry, Shakespeare, and Dr. Who.

Have you ever spent hours working on a project on a computer and found yourself so wrapped up in it that you neglect to save your work as you are going, and then – without warning – the power goes out?  And…you don’t have “auto save” enabled, so the hours you spent on “Book 1” have now been totally lost – or so it seems.  All you have done is now gone -utterly and forever – and no amount of cursing and arm flailing will bring it back – believe me, I’ve tried. Then, you sit down to rebuild it, and in half the time you originally spent working on it, you wind up with something even better than what you had actually lost?

Is it exactly what you had before? No.  However, that loss, actually gave you an opportunity.  You’ve been given a clean slate to start fresh – and your mind is clearer about what needs to be left in and what needs to be left out.

Well, in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 119, he’s talking about relationships, not Excel spreadsheets. The hardships and misfortunes one must fight through in order to maintain and preserve that love, don’t diminish it, they improve it.  They improve it because they destroy it – but in truth – they only destroy a moment of that relationship – a snapshot of it.

O benefit of ill! now I find true
That better is by evil still made better;
And ruined love, when it is built anew,
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
   So I return rebuked to my content,
   And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 119

The thing that gives that relationship life is something so much bigger than that moment of destruction.  The love remains.  Because, as my yoga instructor used to say, “love is what’s left when you let go of everything you don’t need”.

It is the love that rebuilds the relationship “fairer than at first, more strong, far greater”. That love is what will help you rebuild. That’s the love your fellow human beings are going to need from you and that you are going to need for yourself.

We have been given an opportunity. 

We are in the moment between the destruction and the rebuilding.  In this moment, where all the frantic activity has stopped, stop a moment, breathe, listen and find the love that lies within you – the love that you are.  Let that be the foundation when you rebuild.

Alice Sikora