Can disappointments truly be blessings?

Life is all about give and take, this is the natural course of the earth which we have no power over. Life as it is and always will be, poses us with its ups and downs which we see as challenges.These challenges can be very hard nuts to crack and serve as disappointments, the big […]

Life is all about give and take, this is the natural course of the earth which we have no power over. Life as it is and always will be, poses us with its ups and downs which we see as challenges.These challenges can be very hard nuts to crack and serve as disappointments, the big question is can disappointments truly be blessings?
Terhemba Ubugh, a civil servant, thinks that every disappointment is a blessing and that if graded, the saying is 80 percent true. He gave an instance of himself saying: “At a certain time in my life I had serious issues with my mum, which led me to leave our family house; this made me start life on my own and also made me a man. I am not saying that quarrelling with my mum is good, but that singular action that I took because of the quarrel made me independent and strong as a man is to be, in fact it brought out the best in me.”
Alfed Ajembi, a security personnel, is of the view that it is both a blessing and a lesson. He explained that in every experience which might serve as a disappointment, there is a lesson to be learnt which would then serve as a guide to making decisions at times in life.
Not every disappointment is a blessing says Sylvanus Osemeha: “There are some disappointments you cause for yourself, imagine you are given an appointment for 8am and you left your house by 7:45am, then you got to your place of appointment by 8:30am to meet the absence of the person you had the appointment with. Such disappointment is not a blessing because it is of your own accord.” He went on to cite another instance. “On a different scenario, imagine you woke up on time but met traffic on your way or experienced a flat tyre only to notice later that there was an arm robbery attack a few miles from you and you still missed your appointment. That I can call a disappointment with a blessing, so you see there are two ways to it.”
Every disappointment is a blessing for Favour Bitrus, a 400 level student,who said with a sense of nostalgia that: “This statement or adage is real for me to an extent because I have had a personal experience of disappointment which turned out to be a fortune or favor for me. I remember vividly a time I was to travel from Abuja to Jos, on getting to the park, the vehicle was almost full; there was only one space left. I entered the bus and sat on the seat waiting for the conductor to come for his money, only for the conductor to come with a frowning face, asking me to come down from the vehicle and that another passenger already occupied the seat. I argued with him but after a while I bulged to his argument and came down angrily. I joined the next bus and ended up spending two hours in the park before the bus moved, on our journey, very close to Jos, I saw the other vehicle I was to travel with in the bush, it had an accident and most of the passengers were badly injured as the bus was also disfigured. Though I felt bad for those involved in the accident, I also felt happy because it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.”
Cecilia Ufuoma, a business woman, looked at the issue from a religious point: “God works in mysterious ways, His ways cannot be understood by man, He sometimes causes you to have an experience that could be a disappointment to you but which we eventually surmount to a huge blessing. I had an experience with someone who I dated for four years; to me he was going to be my life partner till he broke it off with me. I felt my whole world had crumbled and disappointment was an understatement compared to what I felt but in the long run I found out he was fetish which was not in alignment with my religion, so I just saw it as the will of God.”
I read a story about Victor Moses, the popular football player for Nigeria and Liverpool, who became an orphan at an early age due to the Kaduna riot in 2002.This led to him being taken to England as an asylum-seeker, but it turned out to be his divine breakthrough to stardom both locally and internationally.
What we should also note in life is that you cannot only be at the receiving end in life, when you are being disappointed in life, it could be a blessing to you or another, which is why when your shoes spoil, be they new or old, the cobbler is happy.