Looking for Meaning

 

Pain and suffering. We each experience these in some way in our own lives. We see it right up close, in our faces, and that’s hard to escape. 

If we choose, we may look around and see that this pain and suffering exists around us as well. A friend recently asked me why there was so much pain in this world. I cannot pretend to even begin to know how to provide any kind of answer to that one. I might attempt to philosophize my way through, supported by the many books and talks by people who have spent much time on this subject. All I know for sure is that it is part of this human life. We won't escape it. 

Not only is it all around us, but we also experience past trauma through our ancestors. I recall all the suffering my own grandparents went through, escaping their little town of Tomarza in the 1920s during the Armenian Genocide, the horror, the brutality, the loss of so many family members. After a few years of never knowing if their last day was today they made their way here to the United States and found a new life. It was still challenging, but they were able to rebuild their lives. 

This torment my ancestors experienced does not end with them. My parents suffered their own demons, and their deep inescapable pain was evident in our household when my siblings and I were growing up. We experienced the fallout from their past trauma. It all remains hidden deep in our bones.

And life is life. My grandparents lost children, my parents lost a son, and I lost a son. I joined a support group and have met hundreds of other parents who have also lost children. I am not the only one. We all suffer loss.

There is grief in loss, the loss of someone you love deeply. But loss takes many forms. Not only do we grieve our loved ones, our family members, our parents, our siblings, our children, our friends, but even if they are still here on earth and want nothing more to do with us, we grieve that estrangement. We also grieve job losses and pet losses and maybe even the loss of a home. Sometimes we may experience all of these at once and it feels like the world is crumbling around us. Where do we find that strength to go on? Wouldn’t it be easier to just give it all up?

I have gained a sip of wisdom from books I have read by others in history who experienced profound loss and still managed to see the good somewhere in this life. In Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl survives the horrors of the Holocaust. In some miraculous way, he finds the fortitude and the wisdom deep within himself to say, “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you respond to the situation.” Your freedom to choose. Those are powerful words.

Etty Hillesum is the author of An Interrupted Life, a diary that chronicles the last couple years of her life before and during the time when she was summoned to Westerbork, a stopping point before her final destination of Auschwitz. Again, she exhibits a strength that is understandably rare for most anyone, a wisdom and a deep devotion to give and love and help and serve despite living within the most dire circumstances. Reading her book brought me to tears and even shocked me with her ability to state, “Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.” Where does that come from?

I believe each one of us has that strength somewhere embedded deep inside. But it is not easily accessible, only retrievable in the silence, in the moments of contemplation, and, dare I say, of surrender. In the society and world we’ve grown up in, surrender is not a word we like to use. To most, surrender means giving up, letting go of our strength, and is an indication of weakness. But I don’t mean surrendering the necessary work against the crimes committed on humanity. This is an important effort as modeled by Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela and the like. 

I do believe there is another perspective from which we can view surrender. By letting go, by choosing to surrender the pain and the suffering and the anger and the vengeance, we actually make room for something else to come in. We can then create the space for the beauty and the love to come in and find us. I think that’s what Frankl and Hillesum were able to do.

And so I look up to them. I learn from them. I ponder who they were and what they gave to this world. I feel the ripple effects that continue to flow from their magnificence, from their strength and surrender. I search for the words and examples of others like them, whether from the past or even still here today in this world. I hope to follow in those footsteps when it seems the world is crashing down around me, when I’m feeling the sting from one loss or another.

I've said it before and I’ll say it again… We are here to love. We were never promised a rose garden (as an old song tells us). Life is not meant to be perfect. It is not meant to be all good, and when things fall apart it doesn’t mean we’ve done anything wrong. This is as it is. 

What do we do with that? That’s the question. Will we lose hope? Or become beacons of hope. Will the tiny steps we might eke out each day make a difference? Steps in the direction of kindness and peace, steps of serving someone else in a situation like ours or maybe even worse? That’s where I like to focus. 

Because then, somehow, I do feel the meaning of it all. Somewhere hidden in what sometimes looks like a pile of slop is meaning. And it takes nothing more than getting up each day and setting the intention to love and offer kindness, to be helpful. It is there. Deep within. And if you can find it within, you will find it around you as well.

(Read more about my journey from grief to hope in my books Look Around and A Bird Called Wisdom.)