How the learn the lessons our struggles and pain are here to teach you. #lifelessons
There is a lot of sh!t going on right now.
Hurricanes, wild fires, never-ending wars, preppy skin heads walking around college campuses spewing hate, famines in multiple countries, adults behaving badly running our country, out of control climate change…people in power crazily disputing said climate change.
It’s overwhelming. And these global troubles don’t even speak to the pain, disappointments, and tragedies we experience in our individual lives. And devastations like, a new cancer diagnosis, a parent dying, losing everything in fire or flooding, having your spouse leave you, or the death of a child. And disappointments like not getting the promotion you were working towards, not passing the exam, having a work initiative fall flat, not seeing the scale move when have been making big lifestyle changes, watching your child struggling in school.
Now, don’t get me wrong I am not saying that the loss of a child, or famine are the same as struggling to lose weight or being passed up for a promotion, of course, those are pain on a different scale, but whether its’ world rocking tragedy or the disappointment of things not working out like you planned, it’s painful and pain is pain. Struggle is struggle.
And every experience shapes us.
And pain and struggle have the potential to bring us low or help us elevate.
Victor Frankel wrote, “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”
Dr. Viktor E. Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist. He is the author Man’s Search for Meaning, where he chronicles his time in a Nazi concentration camp where he endured and witnessed unbelievable pain and suffering and lost almost his whole family to the camps. So he knows a thing or two about suffering.
It’s hard to think of pain as way to elevate ourselves, our worldview and our potential in the world, especially when we are in the middle of it. But I truly, in every cell of my being that the purpose of suffering, pain and disappointment is as an opportunity to rise up, be better and live more aligned with our purpose.
Suffering and struggle are hard, but they create three very important qualities awareness, resilience, and belief.
Awareness, is the birth place of change and life (whether we like it or not) is always changing and if we aren’t able to adapt and flow with the changes, we will be in a lot of hurt.
Resilience, if the ability to get back up after life lays you low. And life has a way of throwing curve balls to knock you down a time or too. But I think that’s the point, the point is to learn to get back up.
Belief, this actually goes hand in hand with resilience. We have to believe that we are capable before we are ever able to do. But to believe we are capable we have to experience doing, failing and then doing again and succeeding. Belief in ourselves has to begin with some success and success can NEVER happen unless you take some amount of risk.
Pain and disappointment are our best teachers. They are the most hated teachers in the school of life, but they sure do have a powerful impact, but only if you can listen to their teachings.
And the severity of the lessons are not evenly disturbed and that seems unfair Life is unfair.
Actually, life isn’t unfair, life is life and it gives us what we need to become the person we are meant to be. And focusing on the unfairness of it all, is a waste of time and energy focusing on something so out of our control as fairness. And the sucky thing is going to happen whether you think it’s fair or not, so you might as well focus towards finding the lesson and purpose of the tragedy.
Sometimes the purpose learning to take that next breath after the loss of a child, so you can keep breathing and living for the rest of your children and then help others through the loss of their child. Maybe the purpose of your spouse leaving, is to rediscover the amazing lost you who is meant to create beautiful art. And maybe it’s tapping into grit you didn’t know you had after 30 year career fails. Or learning to rely on the generosity of others and asking for help after a flood destroys your house.
And sometimes the lesson tangible and easy to see and sometimes they are more subtle, but there is always a lesson. And if you glean the lessons to be learned from every struggle, we will move closer to our highest self.
“What is to give light must endure burning.” – Dr Victor Frankl
A candle must burn to give us light and steel must be melted and pounded to become shiny and strong, so must we take the trials in our lives to become better, bright and stronger.
With lots of Love,
Sally
P.S. I write this as a middle-class white woman, who grew up with two loving parents. I know I live a privileged life. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have great empathy for the suffering of people who have been on a different journey than I have. And that doesn’t mean I should diminish the pain and disappointment I do experience in my life and neither should you. I hear all the time people recount a upsetting situation in their life and then say, but that’s not important there are far bigger problems…yes its good to keep perspective, but if you deny and diminish your own suffering you wont get the full benefit of the cosmic lesson needing to be learned. We each have our own path, our own journey and comparing the gravity of each of our pain isn’t helpful because each of our lives have a distinctly different purpose. And that purpose is to live consciously in our skin, in our circumstances, doing the best we can do and taking the next right action.
Because that’s what changes our circumstance and the world, each of us taking our next right action.
I did a facebook life…because I was just feeling so inspired after I posted this post. Check it out!
