Seeking Meaning In The Catastrophe Of Circumstances
There’s a famous story in the Bible about a man named Job — a prosperous, just, and kind-hearted man of God. Job’s life was turned upside down when he was suddenly struck with misfortune. All his children died. He was infected with disease. Everything he owned — property, money, livestock — had been destroyed. Like any man who has found himself in such circumstances, Job questioned God. Why me? What did I do to deserve this evil? Am I not a man who has done all the good I can, more than any human being on this earth could possibly do? In response, God asked Job an unrelated question — does he have the power to create the universe, the stars, the seas and the land he is standing on? Where was Job when God was doing all these works? In answer, Job kept silent. Theologians drew many lessons from this story, of which one was that man should not try to measure the standards of the infinite with those of the finite. “The lesson I take from Job is simpler,” Jim Stockdale writes in Thoughts Of A Philosophical Fighter Pilot, “Life is not fair. There is no moral economy or balance in the nature of things such that virtue is rewarded and vice punished. The good man hangs on and hangs in there… On the battlefield, says Aristotle, the greatest pressure is fear of death and the temptation is to run away. But the courageous man holds on.” As the story unfolds, Job continues to seek meaning in the catastrophe of circumstances, and because of his unwavering faith and enduring courage, God restored whatever Job had lost, many-fold.
Seeking meaning in the most painful, stressful, and catastrophic of circumstances, situations, and events of life, and coming out victorious — that’s the idea for today.
Suffering Ceases To Be Suffering
In the bestselling Man’s Search For Meaning, the great psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote about the power of the human mind when faced with a situation that is unchangeable (an incurable disease, death, loss, etc.), and how one can transform personal tragedy into triumph, predicament into human achievement. Recalling an encounter with an elderly man suffering from severe depression because of the death of his wife, “What would have happened,” Frankl asked him, “if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?” “Oh,” the man replied, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” “You see,” Frankl replied, “such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering — to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.” The man kept silent, stood up, shook Frankl’s hand, and left the office. “In some way,” Frankl concludes, “suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
The Human I Became To Get It
Despite winning gold at the 2006 and 2010 Winter Olympics, the American snowboarder Shaun White did not finish top three at the 2014 Games in Sochi. Depressed, anxious, and drowning in the sorrows of his poor performance, White said he sat in his Malibu house, “crying, trying my hardest to feel so sad for myself that I didn’t win.” In those moments, he experienced an epiphany: “What if I made this the best thing that’s ever happened to me?” So he began to uncover the root of what went wrong at Sochi. In the qualifying rounds before the Olympic finals, White scored an impressive 95.75 — the highest of the night. “I had the winning cards,” he said, but somehow, “I just couldn’t put them down when it mattered most.” He began to realise that it wasn’t a physical problem — it was mental. Figuring out what had caused his mind to falter, he unpacked every aspect of his life with rigorous honesty: “I picked apart my personal life away from the snow… I picked apart things that were upsetting me: how I was portrayed online and in ads. Do I like who I’m working with? When was the last time I spoke to my brother? When was the last time I hung out with my friends? When was the last time I worked out? Those are the things I started to change in my life. It had nothing to do with snowboarding.” He changed his exercise regime, “not for the physical benefits, but because I know after a good workout, I’m happier.” He deleted most of the photos on his Instagram, “because I didn’t like all the old photos of me with the long hair.” He reconnected with his brother. He made time to hang out with his friends. He began to do all these important things with meaning, purpose, and intentionality, eventually transforming himself into “a more complete, happier person.” Now, when he gets on the snowboard, White said, he’s not just “a guy” but “a happier guy.” Fast forward to the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, White was living in a “déjà vu of the moment at the previous Olympics in Sochi.” Just like four years prior, it came down to the final run. “But this time, at the top of the pipe, I had the complete opposite feeling. I had this overwhelming confidence that I was about to win.” White scored 97.75 to win the gold. “And when I look back, I’m so proud of that gold medal, not necessarily because of the medal, but because of the human I became to get it. You know, a more well-rounded person. A happier person.”
I Gradually Ceased To Be Afraid
In February 1884, at 8:30am, twenty-six-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, while at the Albany County Legislature, received a telegram on the birth of his daughter. Thirty hours later, his mother died from typhoid fever. Eleven hours later, his wife died from an inflamed kidney caused by childbirth. “The light has gone out of my life,” Roosevelt wrote that night. In order to distract himself from the catastrophes of his life, he plunged himself deeper into legislative work, which, instead of helping him find solace or peace, worsened his depression. To escape the calamity of his life, Doris Kearns Goodwin writes in Leadership In Turbulent Times, “Roosevelt headed into the Badlands, where he had purchased a ranch the previous year,” and with reckless abandon and an unstoppable frenzy, “punished himself with the hardest and most dangerous work of the cowboys, as if, through excitement and fear, he might retrieve the possibility of feeling alive once again.” For two years, Roosevelt rode his horse sixteen hours a day, hunted big game, gathered and sold cattle in the markets, “playing cowboy.” Over time, his depression began to lift, and he had “emerged from his traumatic ordeal stronger in body and resurgent in spirit… [cultivating] courage as a matter of habit, in the sense of repeated effort and repeated exercise of will-power… [and recast] himself as a new kind of American man.” He returned to the East no longer a victim of circumstance but as one who found meaning and purpose greater than himself, remarrying and re-entering political life. “The loss of his wife and mother on the same day,” Goodwin writes, “became more than a catastrophic landmark in Theodore Roosevelt’s personal life: the brutal twist of fate reshaped his philosophy of leadership… underscored the vulnerability, fragility, and mutability of all his endeavours.” “There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first,” Roosevelt wrote, “but by acting as if I was not afraid, I gradually ceased to be afraid,” laying the foundations in the heart of a once-broken man to become the twenty-sixth president of the United States.
That’s How I Keep My Wife In My Life
The director Francis Ford Coppola [Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, The Black Stallion] recently lost his wife of 60 years. In the midst of grief, at an incredibly low point, he came across a Marcus Aurelius quote that transformed his idea of loss. If you lose a loved one, it said, honour them by being more like them, and they will live in your actions. “My wife was very good,” he explained. “If someone was alone or sick or something, she’d call them up and be comforting to them. And I’m not like that, you know? So I started to do that. People that I know, some guys my age who have no grandchildren, I call them up and say, Hey, how are you? And they are so pleased and so kind. And that’s how I keep my wife in my life.” That’s how, in the midst of catastrophe, of depression, of terrible circumstances, we find meaning and come out victorious.
