Ups and Downs
Life has its challenges
by Brian Radcliffe
Suitable for Whole School (Sec)
Aims
To consider strategies for coping with success and disappointment.
Preparation and materials
- Have available a copy of the Peanuts comic strip ‘Life’s ups and downs’ and the means to display it during the assembly. It is available at: https://tinyurl.com/ycytkhe4
- Saint Paul’s words are found in the Bible in Philippians 4.11-13.
Assembly
- Peanuts is a long-standing American comic strip written and drawn by Charles M. Schulz. Its main characters are a boy named Charlie Brown, a girl named Lucy Van Pelt and a dog called Snoopy.
Show the image of the Peanuts comic strip. - In this strip, we see Charlie chatting with a downcast Lucy and giving her the stereotypical advice that life has its ups and downs. It’s not really very helpful! All of us have probably had well-meaning friends who’ve tried to cheer us up like this. Lucy’s response is loud and indignant. She refuses to accept that life should have any ‘down’ times. She just wants ‘ups’ all the time. Don’t we all?
- The problem is that what Charlie says is true. Life gives us both good days and bad days. Sometimes, it begins as we get up. As the saying goes, ‘We get out of bed on the wrong side.’ Nothing seems to go right for us, and we show it. Or sometimes, unexpected events hit us out of nowhere. On the other hand, we may get a pleasant surprise, a compliment from someone, a success that we thought was going to be a defeat. Life does have its ups and downs, however much we’d like it to be up all the time.
- This brutal reality doesn’t help Lucy at all, though. She remains discouraged and Charlie feels like a failure.
Time for reflection
I wonder which character each of us most identifies with.
Are we like Lucy, feeling that life isn’t going well? Or are we like Charlie: wanting to help, but failing miserably? Most of us can identify with both characters; at different times, we’ve experienced both life’s ups and its downs.
So, let’s consider what might be a helpful approach when we experience those down times. Let’s reflect on how we can value the up times.
Maybe we need to start with our perceptions. We need to recognize when we’re experiencing a down and when we’re having an up. It’s a bit like when we draw a list of pros and cons, with all the positives on one side and all the negatives on the other. Our emotions will often draw us towards the negative side, but we must always recognize the positives.
Saint Paul was someone who had a life full of ups and downs. He travelled widely, wrote important pieces of literature, founded vibrant church communities, influenced leaders across the Roman Empire and had many generous friends. Those were some of his ups. Yet he was also shipwrecked, beaten up and imprisoned during his lifetime, suffering times of rejection and poverty, and enduring an unpleasant medical condition. Those were among his downs. However, he was able to say that he’d learnt to be satisfied and contented whatever the circumstances: whether he was in need or wealthy, full or hungry, living with too much or too little.
Achieving contentment is fashionable these days, with many wellness and lifestyle bloggers offering their advice on it. It’s the destination sought by all sorts of people in a stressful, erratic world. In a sense, it’s what Lucy is looking for.
So, how does Paul say he’s achieved contentment in his life?
- Is it by ignoring the downs? No.
- Is it by concentrating on the half-full rather than the half-empty aspects of life? No.
- Is it by depending on friends or possessions, by filling his life with treats? No.
Paul says, ‘I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me.’
What do you have inside that gives you strength? It may be ambition, or an optimistic outlook. For Paul, it was the fact that he had a faith in Jesus Christ working in him, through him and around him. He had better support than Charlie Brown was able to give to Lucy.
Life, unfortunately, is full of downs as well as ups. What Lucy longs for is never going to happen. Let’s make sure that we have a resource that helps us cope.
The following song is about faith. Stormzy knows where his faith rests.
Remind the students where help is available in school if they are struggling with life’s downs at the moment. Remind them that they don’t need to cope on their own.
Song/music
‘Blinded by your grace’ by Stormzy, available at: https://youtu.be/HPuj6UISMhs (6.01 minutes long)
Extension activities
- Encourage the students to take a piece of paper and draw a vertical line down the middle. Ask them to label one side of the line ‘Ups’ and the other side ‘Downs’.
On the Ups side, ask them to write down all the good, positive things (however trivial) that have happened in the past week.
On the Downs side, ask them to write down all the negative, discouraging, hurtful things from the past week.
Encourage the students to consider what resources might help them to achieve a measure of contentment right now. - Talk about faith with the students, and research the impact of faith on people’s lives.
