I caught myself in this one just recently. A major event occurred that knocked the wind out of me. As I noticed my difficulty being comforted by friendly advice, it became evident that it all their words felt empty. They had no guarantees that the situation would turn out well and I was certain that until I had that, I could not be pacified. Just as this thought solidified in my mind, I laughed out loud. I was telling myself that “all I needed” was to take away the pain of not knowing and not having control. What I was really asking for was to eliminate everything I was having to struggle with. I wanted to rearrange the furniture rather than move from the building falling apart around me.
Luckily, I saw a truth that at first was unwanted but has now become a point of hope: it is only during times of suffering that our safety nets are shaken enough to provide access to our deepest thoughts, feelings, and meanings. Normally we are not open to anything dramatically different from what we already know. In times of crisis, however, the familiar is gone so we finally have room to try on something new. This was evident with CS Lewis when his faith dramatically changed with the death of his wife, as revealed in “A Grief Observed”. Richard Rohr describes this very process in his book, “Hope Against the Darkness.”
This does not mean that there will not be profound moments of grief and loss, because struggle means the loss of safety and security, as well who we were before the event changed everything. However, there is a difference between confronting the pain and seeing what lessons might lie within, and lying down accepting fate, no longer searching and no longer trying to grow. For suffering to be the transformative rite of passage that Thomas Moore describes in “Dark Night of the Soul”, we must work hard to find the lessons, we must seek out advice that is hard to hear, and we must be willing to be vulnerable enough to ask for help.
Questions that prompt an active role might include :
- What do I think should be? How is that being challenged?
- What am I being invited to let go of? What am I being invited to explore?
- What does the world offer me? What do I want to offer the world?
- What does it mean to be a good human being?
- Who was I? Who am I becoming?
- What do I want my life to be about?
- What elements of my life do I want to hold on to? Why are these important to me?