Adversity (Laugh in the face of adversity)

Adversity is the shortened lazy title for the song but it does tend to give an impression that the content will be negative. Let me assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. Zarinah was my housemate after my wife and I separated and we wrote this song together drawing on the mindset that Zarinah had to adopt just to face each day.

Zarinah lived for peace and would embrace pain as part of a spiritual path and believed that at some stage the reward for the lesson would be revealed to her. Well, I guess it did, as one day she realised that the thing that she had control over was how she approached the events and situations that were responsible for her confusion and grief.

The ability to laugh at the severity of things somehow took away some of the negative impact and gave power back to Zarinah. With more and more practice it became clear that many of the things that caused the pain weren't her fault and the things that she could have done differently were things that had already passed and that that lesson was now learnt.

The chorus:

        Change my mind

        Learning from the things that happen to me

        So I feel fine

        You know I feel fine

The message, of course, is that NO MATTER WHAT, it is how we use our emotions not how our emotions use us that determine the level of pain or happiness we feel in life. It requires practising taking a positive approach to things based on what happens to us, and we do this by consciously changing our minds away from where we have already been to a place that our experience tells brings us happiness. Teach ourselves to do this and we can easily laugh in the face of adversity!

By Peter and Zarinah

music@techemail.com