We are having our own tiny Ragnarok here at the house as I am running a pretty nasty fever and Max woke up vomiting this morning.

I think I would rather fight a giant snake than deal with puke.

So we have the horror and bloodshed of Ragnarok, and a lot of the Gods die and the earth is awash in fire and death. We also have a sort of reversal of the creation myth of the Norse, and everything returns to the silent void that came before everything else.

It’s a reset.

This isn’t some crappy lack-of-commitment reset though – dead people and most of the dead Gods stay dead, but things begin again. The earth is repopulated, a newer and greater God than Odin takes over and things are cool. Baldur, whose death triggered all of this even gets to come back.

This seems to often be true of life.

Hardships come and hardships go. They can be crippling as we cling to everything we are losing and refusing to accept change, or they can an opportunity to start over, to take stock of what matters and move on.

At the very least, they are always an opportunity to be thankful for the things we do have, and to learn to cultivate an appreciation for the things that are left. This can be actual possessions, or friends and family after a disagreement or fight.

There is always something to be thankful for, something to build on.

Death and rebirth are a popular theme in just about all mythologies, and there is a reason for this. Part of human experience is to lose things and to have things go awry. We have to choose between letting this beat us, or building something new.

We will wrap up Ragnarok tomorrow with the beginning of a new weekly feature, “I Was Wrong Wednesday”, where I examine the things I was completely wrong about over the years.

That’s if I survive the Pukepacalypse.