Sometimes Life Crashes
Tsunamis destroy. Diseases ravage. Terrible accidents happen. We make mistakes. We age and wrinkle and fall apart. Governments oppress. Wars rage. Economies falter. People disappoint. Marriages fail. And parents are sometimes horribly, horribly flawed.
There are times, I’m sure, when it feels like life is crashing down on top of you, smothering and choking you, breaking and thrashing you about as it scrapes and gouges at the soft flesh of your heart, burying you deeper and deeper under the rubble and debris of a life that seems at the brink of collapse.
Does this sound familiar? Have you been there? Is it happening now?
It hurts! There is an indescribable ache that throbs in every beat of your lonely or troubled heart. It sometimes feels like you want to just throw in the towel and call it quits. We all understand the desire.
All I can ask of you is please, don’t. There is hope. There is hope. Please believe me when I say to you, straight from my heart through this page to your soul, there is, in fact, hope that lingers in the reality of what life was meant to be and who governs the process we experience living it.
Whatever the specific trial you happen to be going through right now, however much pain you’re having to endure, the sorrow can recede, the heartache can fade, the personal trial can be given meaning and purpose and can start to make sense no matter how dark and despairing things seem to be right now.
When Life Smacks You Upside the Head, You’re Left with One of Two Very Stark Choices
- Lie down, just accept it, be a victim, give up, curl into the fetal position and let circumstances run over you again and again and again as you wait for the end. Or …
- Scramble to your feet best you can, stand as tall as you’re able, look your trial in the eyes and persevere while taking steps to overcome and transcend, to learn and grow from the experience.
I invite you to begin that process today, right now, with this article, if you haven’t already started that journey. You will learn how to better overcome, endure, and transcend your challenges and trials and begin living once more.
Inspiration for this Article
I recently spoke to a group of 46 + year old single adults. Some were widowed. Others never married. Some were disabled. Some, divorced. Most were in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. Some were in their 80s. One was in her 90s.
This post is the nuts and bolts of what I shared with them that evening. I was told by many in attendance that it was tremendously helpful. If you find yourself in such circumstances, I hope it will help you too. If you are not yet in such circumstances, the Boy Scout motto will prove a blessing to you one inevitable day: Be Prepared!
5 Ways to Endure the Unendurable
1. Create Meaning
Dr. Victor Frankl, had the misfortune of being a Jew in 1942, Nazi Germany. It was that year that he and his family were rounded up and shipped to a Nazi extermination camp. He would end up in 5, including a short stint at the infamous Auschwitz.
In all, he spent 3 years as an inmate in the most horrific experiment in evil ever perpetrated against humanity. The isolation from loved ones, the fear and anxiety, the severe deprivation and hunger, the random brutality and systematized horror, the insanity and inhumanity of it all is beyond comprehension.
And yet, after being liberated, he would write a book called, Man’s Search for Meaning, and make this statement in it:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances…
“And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate…
“Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.”
Out of the experiences he lived and witnessed as a survivor of the Holocaust, Dr. Frankl developed a new form of therapy he called logotherapy. Logotherapy operates on Nietzsche’s idea that all we need to endure any hardship is a big enough reason why. In other words, if significant meaning can be attached to the thing we suffer, then the thing we suffer can be endured.
What meaning can be attached to your suffering?
Following are 6 questions you can ask yourself as you create meaning and purpose for your trials. Other questions can be asked to direct your thinking too. But these are a good start:
- What is this challenge trying to teach me?
- What can it teach me about life?
- What does it teach me about me?
- What weaknesses does it reveal?
- What lessons am I being taught about my values and priorities?
- How can my pain be used to help others?
In this way, question by insightful question, meaning and purpose can be created for why we are called to so struggle with life.
2. Discover Meaning
There are two ways to approach making sense of your trials and pain. One is to attach meaning to it (as mentioned in #1). The other is to discover its inherent meaning by backing up a bit and viewing your trial with a more eternal perspective.
“With celestial sight, trials impossible to change become possible to endure.” ~ Russell M. Nelson
C.S. Lewis explained that our trials and suffering are ways God reaches down to build something better than the raw materials we were to start with. I think his explanation will have value for many of my readers. Here’s what he said:
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps you can understand what He is doing.
“He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you know that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make much sense.
“What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards.
“You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage; but He is building a palace.”
Such an understanding of our trials can lead to renewed perseverance as we contemplate the person God (or life) is making out of us.
The purpose of life, then, is to learn and grow. The purpose of our trials is to get us to fulfill the purpose of life.
“Rather than simply passing through trials, we must allow trials to pass through us in ways that sanctify us.” ~ Neil A. Maxwell
Life is meant to test us and help us grow. That can’t happen on the cool green of a grassy knoll. It only happens in the sweat and challenge of the uphill climb. It finds us and yanks us around a bit to see what we’re made of, or, more accurately, so we can discover what we’re made of ourselves.
That uphill climb provides us with opportunities to build moral and emotional muscle as well. No one ever built muscle lifting air. There has to be resistance. What happens when we lift weights is that we are actually damaging muscle. The body overcompensates as it repairs the damage making the muscle bigger and stronger. We experience that process as larger biceps and broader shoulders … and more physical strength.
Life does that too as we climb our mountains of trial and difficulty: we build moral, spiritual and emotional muscles in the processes. So you see, the trial you are going through, while maybe not of your choosing and maybe not even necessarily the will of God (or life or the universe), it is nonetheless an opportunity for you to lift heavy weight and build your muscles of character and compassion and forgiveness and perseverance.
3. Stop Staring so Close at the Rock in your Hand
I brought a black stone from my garden to that singles conference I referenced above. It was in my pocket as I spoke. About 10 minutes into my presentation, I took it from my pocket and gave it to a woman sitting in the front row.
I asked her to hold it at arm’s length and tell me what she saw.
“The rock,” she answered matter-of-factly. The crowd laughed. I did too. I asked her why that was all she saw.
“Because I’m looking at it,” she said just as matter-of-factly as before and we laughed again.
“But what do you mostly see?” I pressed.
“The rock!” she insisted.
“Why?”
“Because that’s what I’m focusing on.”
“Exactly!” I said, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. “Now keep the rock in your hand and focus on me,” I continued. “What do you mostly see now?”
“You.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s where I’m focusing.”
“Ahhh!” I sighed. The look in her face said she was starting to see where I was taking her. But I wasn’t done. “Now, close one eye and start pulling the rock closer and closer to your open eye until it either touches your eyebrow or the bridge of your nose.” She did. “What do you see now?” I asked her.
“Nothing but the rock,” was the quiet answer. I heard someone near the back groan, “Ohhhh!”
And that is what we do, my dear friend. If you incessantly think about your trial, complain about it, pray on it, cry over it, tell others about it … all … the … time … it is no different than doing what the woman did with the rock. And you will see what she saw: Nothing but rock. Nothing but pain.
If you go around wearing dark sunglasses, everything will look dark and dreary. If you focus only on the pain and suffering in life, life itself will eventually take on those same characteristics.
So take off your shades and put your stone away in your pocket and begin to notice the rest of life still buzzing around with activity and vitality … and start living yours too!
4. Don’t become your Pain
You are not your trial. You are not your pain or sorrow. Some so strongly identify themselves with their particular set of challenges that the trial becomes an extension of the personality and character of the individual.
Words are very powerful things. They not only reflect our thinking, they help shape it. The words we use to describe ourselves also tend to lock us into a role or free us from it.
“I am a cripple.”
“I am a widow.”
“I am a sinner.”
Such words lock and trap us into an identity and attitude that reflects that role. Instead, disassociate the obstacle from who you are. Think of yourself this way:
“I have a disability.”
“I lost my spouse.”
“I committed a sin, or made a mistake.”
This way, your pain loses its ability to define who you are. It becomes something that has happened to you or that you did, rather than a reflection of who you are. Overcoming outside conditions or external obstacles is a lot easier than changing the very nature of your being – even if it is only artificially true by the identity we create and assume.
5. Get on with Living!
Don’t get stuck in the rut of your difficulty. The rut you get stuck in can quickly become its own trial. You don’t need to add fuel to an already consuming fire! So get on with life!
Does it hurt to be out with others? I’m so sorry. But get out with others anyway! Do you feel overwhelmed by the pain, whether physical or emotional? Watch a movie and laugh out loud anyway. Go to a concert. Sit on the beach. Read a book. Do some gardening. Learn a skill or pick up a hobby. Paint or play piano or write poetry or swim. Anything will do.
Don’t wait for the perfect thing. Experiment. Explore. Learn. Develop. That is the stuff of life. So stop sleeping past noon, turn off the TV, and get outside and live! Take the first step toward life and living.
The only time you’re allowed to stop living is when you’re dead. If you’re reading this post, you’re not yet. So stop acting like you are and get off the couch and go do something!
Afterthoughts
We will All have Mountains to Climb
Some have climbed them already. Some are climbing them now. And some haven’t even spotted mountains anywhere on their horizons yet. But mountains are there and will have to be climbed eventually.
If you feel like you are all alone, like there is no way out and no way around and no way you could possibly go through your difficulties, please just take it on faith that you are not, in fact, alone. Others have successfully walked where you are walking now. There can be a measure of strength for you in knowing that.
All of us will, at some point and to some degree, feel the stab of pain and sorrow. We will have mountains to climb and burdens to carry and roads to travel that are difficult, long and sometimes lonely.
But as we find meaning to our trials, keep them in proper perspective and keep living a life of purpose and significance, our trials will shrink to a manageable size as we learn and grow and become in this life.
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 Lie down, and accept your fate, or 2) Scramble to your feet the best you can, stand as tall as you’re able, look your trial in the eyes and persevere. Come discover 5 ways you too can persevere in the face of your challenges and even become better for having endured. "Pin It")
Like it Ken, standing strong against what could knock us for six. I didn’t do that once. Back on New Year’s Eve 1999 after a few years of losing my father suddenly, losing my prized job almost overnight, my Mum getting cancer and being tested twice for it as my health deteriorated, getting into financial difficulty, and my partner leaving, I decided to end it all. But I chose, at the last minute, to fight back, lift my head up, and use my trials as fuel to power me to better days. Challenges are often calls to access more of ourselves that we have left dormant or refused to activate. Perhaps you’re not having a hard time, you’re being invited to have an amazing one!!
Absolutely awesome, John!
And now look at the lives you’re affecting for good! Thank you so much for sharing your story here. It is always inspiring to me and to readers to know that there are people who have been at the bottom, with only two ways to escape: end it all or climb up. Speaking for who-knows-how-many, thank you for climbing and improving our lives because of it!
I like that: “Perhaps you’re not having a hard time, you’re being invited to have an amazing one!” Perfectly said, John!
And thank you for your always-thoughtful comments.
Hey Ken,
I was very busy yesterday and missed this but I’m glad I came over today!
This is wonderful! I loved #3 Stop Staring so Close at the Rock in your Hand and #4, and 1 and 2. Oh, okay, I loved #5 too!
Creating meaning – isn’t that what many bloggers do with their troubles? I know I’ve done it with my writing as well. It’s a wonderful gift to be able to do that. Sometimes we do that just by talking to a friend.
I’m going to stop typing and start Tweeting now!
Lori
You are just too wonderfully sweet, Lori! I’m thrilled you liked what I wrote — that means a lot to me.
But I do have a question: Is #5 really loved or is he the unwanted stepchild of the family you only said you loved because you didn’t want him to feel excluded? I’m just saying that I noticed your expression of love for poor old #5 was a bit of an afterthought. Just wondering. 🙂
It is one of the joys of blogging, to create meaning by making sense of what we experience and pass on whatever insights we gain on the journey of life to others so they can travel with fewer needless stones in their backpacks.
Thanks for the wonderful comment, Lori, and have an awesome week!
“You are not your pain or sorrow. ” This is such an important message because I think it is so easy for us to get caught up in identifying with our pain. It isn’t until we let go of that, and the limitations that we are free to become more of ourselves.
I agree with you 100%, Wendy!
It is so easy to identify with our pain, in part, because the pain feels so real at the moment of experiencing it. If left to fester, it can quickly dig down inside of us and take up residence there. I guess that’s why we do what we do … share some of ourselves with those interested in hopes that others might skip some of the needless pain in life and reach higher and live with greater joy.
Thank you for your comment, Wendy. And thank you for what you do on your own blog as well!
Great image with the rock! Something Marianne Williamson wrote once stayed with me. She talked about getting knocked off her feet over and over. Each time she would struggle back to her feet until she finally considered that maybe staying on her knees was the answer. My word this year is Yield. I think yielding, at least in the way I’m using it, is not the same things as lying down and being a victim. I think of it more as working with the forces in your life instead of against them. I wish I had been at your speech. I’m sure it was great!
Hi Galen,
You were right to point out the idea of yielding. Thank you for doing so! There are trees that grow tall and firm, but tend to snap or fall in strong storm weather because there is no yield to them. Then there are trees that sway and bend (palm trees come to mind), that yield to the storms and usually stay upright as a result. Sometimes we need to do the same to keep from being fully uprooted as well.
Thank you so much for that insight, Galen!
Galen, just checked out your blog and read a bunch of what you wrote about forgiveness. Lots of great stuff there. I especially liked what you said about conditional types of forgiveness.
What an inspirational post! I especially love the metaphor about the rock, and about how we put too much focus on what is wrong with our lives, when if we’d just look around we would see that there is so much ELSE we can be experiencing. Thank you, thank you – for your words of wisdom! 🙂
~June
Thank you, June!
Not sure why, but my spam detector marked you as spam. Just found you sitting lonely in my spam prison and just unlocked the door and set you free! 🙂 Sorry for the delay between your comment and my reply!
It is just so easy to get caught up in the problems of life, isn’t it? We can get so blinded to everything but the big sore spot that keeps getting stepped on, bumped and re-injured. But that has a way of reinforcing the problems in life. If I experience some adversity and get beat up a bit by life, then focus all my attention on the problem to the exclusion of everything else, then it starts very quickly to feel like my whole life is one big obstacle to happiness, that nothing ever goes my way. Such a self-defeating (even if understandable) way to live!
Thank you for your kind comments. Hope to see you around again soon! 🙂
hello ken
thanks for contributing to this month’s edition of the life skills magazine i really appreciate it.
You’ve written wise words here and they are uplifting, inspiring and encouraging.
If i were to summarize;
It’s important we don’t stay so focused on the struggles or pain in order to avoid us becoming the pain itself because we lose all the enthusiasm for living.
take care and enjoy the rest of the day.
It’s an honor to have been included, Ayo! You have an awesome product with some profound columnists and contributors (even though you let me on board this month too! :))
Thank you for your kind words, Ayo, it is always a pleasure to see you here.
I like the way you worded that: enthusiasm for living. That is a good way to live, Ayo.
Be good!
Hi Ken,
Very nice topic here. It is crucial that we focus on what is good in our lives. If we keep focusing on our pain and what is going wrong in our lives, then this is what we keep getting, more pain and misery. It is very important to separate ourselves from what is bothering us. Thanks for sharing Ken 🙂
Hey there, Dia!
We are so good at creating self-perpetuating vicious cycles, aren’t we? I agree with you that we definitely find in life what we seek. If we look for (focus on) pain and sorrow and difficulty, we already know what we’ll keep bumping into!
Thanks for hanging out and leaving a comment, Dia. It’s great to have you here!
What a wonderful post Ken, brilliant stuff!
You’re right, bad times happen to us all – I once heard that the only people who don’t have any problems are dead. We can’t stop them happening, but we can choose how we react to them.
Reacting in one way will bring about one set of results, as will reacting in any other way. Just because it’s happened does not mean that you ‘have’ to react in a certain way. We DO have a choice.
Ken, I’m amazed at the level of insights that you bring to the table here, you consistently write quality work. I’m astounded, and I can certainly learn a thing or two from you 🙂
Thanks Stu! But I’m just the student learning from the pros like you!
I love that quote: those with no problems are dead! So true! We complain about our difficulties when we get them, but if we look back on the road we’ve been traveling and pinpoint those moments along the path that are filled with the most growth, I’d bet some pretty good money that most of them were when we were facing challenges in life.
Perhaps our most trying times should be those we are most grateful for too!
I like what you said about choice too. I think we sometimes underestimate that power. But it is that power that determines how we experience life and what path we walk, and whether we keep walking it … or choose a better one!
I’ve loved reading about the choices you’ve made about taking Unlock the Door to the next level and seeing you guest post all over the place. Exciting stuff!
Thanks again for your amazingly generous words (said the pupil to the master)! 🙂 I really do appreciate it — the stop-by and the comment too!
that’s deep Ken
i always believed that there is a reason behind suffering
your post made lots of things clear now
thank you 🙂
Thank you for saying so, Farouk! Good to see you, bud!
There is just so much that suffering tells us about ourselves and life and others. It is an intense training ground, a sort of boot-camp for life.
Take care and be good!
excellent article!!! I am so impressed. You never cease to amaze me. I have passed this article on to many of my friends and family as I know that your words were as powerful as our thoughts. Thanks for giving us a different perspective on my Palace in progress.
Thanks so much, Shelly! And welcome to M2bH!
Thank you for your kind words and thank you for passing the article on, and thank you for leaving such a gracious comment.
I truly believe as the C.S. Lewis quote suggests, that we were, in fact, meant to be palaces rather than the straw huts and tiny shacks and dilapidated shanties so many of us are far too often satisfied with being. We can be so much more. We are called to be so much more. And perhaps seemingly quite counter-intuitively, our trials and challenges are perhaps the best vehicle for getting us there.
Thanks again for your kind words, Shelly.
I love a long well written blog post! And this is one of them! I think the things in life that we must endure are there to test how bad we really want to get to our goals. Thats why obstacles have become mole hills in my eyes…just something to get over. Good work
Welcome to M2bH, Ralph!
Thank you so much for your compliment. Flattery will most definitely get you places here! 🙂
I like your perspective: trials being tests we endure to demonstrate how badly we want to achieve our goals. With that perspective, Ralph, not much can keep you down for very long, can it? Would that everyone’s obstacles were but molehills in their eyes! I love you attitude. Imagine how much less suffering there would be in the world!
Thank you for adding your perspective to the discussion. I really appreciate it, Ralph. Come back soon! 🙂
[…] they can fly or that they are married to a celebrity) is someone whose thoughts have become so painful that they create a fantasy world into which they can escape. It makes them feel better. In other […]
[…] “Enduring the Unendurable” – Meant to be […]
I loved this post! In particular #4 resonated with me — YOU are not your TRIAL. I have a hard time separating myself from what’s happening to me sometimes, so overwhelmed at what I perceive to be God kicking me in the shin, that I tend to wear this label like painted on clothing. This is a great reminder to remove the label & rename myself into something I can more easily live with. Thank you!
So glad to have helped, Andi-Roo! I think those who believe God is micro-managing all of existence, that everything that happens is because He directed it to happen are those who find it the most difficult to separate that way. But I don’t believe we are the proverbial marionettes in God’s hands as he orchestrates every movement, directing every choice and decision so they create the music of His choice. I believe the greatest gift God ever gave us was that of free will. He honors it. But it also allows others to exercise it poorly, even if that means their choices affect and even hurt us. In that context, it’s much easier to see that any particular trial we are going through may have nothing whatsoever to do with God’s kick to our bruised shins. Some of it is just the way life works. Some due to others’ free agency. Some due to our own self-neglect. But one thing that perception change can do for us is to remove us from the ranks of the victim. It removes some of the sense of inevitability and helplessness many victims tend to feel.
Thanks for the comment, Andi-roo. Great to meet you.