What Finding Meaning in Suffering Is Not
When you find meaning in your life and in the suffering that you endured you are not doing any of the following:
You are not denying anger, grief, or disappointment because of what happened to you. It did happen and your negative response is what we all go through. To find meaning is not to put the pillow over your head and hope the pain goes away.
When you find meaning you are not playing games wit25h yourself by saying, “Oh well, I can just make the best of what happened to me.” Yes, you can make the best of what happened, but if this is your meaning in what you have suffered, you are not going after that woundedness inside of you. The “oh, well” approach is so passive. We need a more active approach to the pain.
When you find meaning you do not sugar-coat the injustice and distort reality by saying, “All things happen for good reasons and so I will try to see the good in what was done to me.” Let us be honest: Maybe there was not any good in the injustice itself. What you learn from it will have goodness, but the event itself? Maybe you will find no good in that injustice against you and that is all right.
Robert
