Finding Purpose… Even In Difficult Times

Posted on October 03, 2009 by Ronald T. Brown, Ph.D.

“He who has a WHY to live for can bear with almost any HOW.” – Nietzsche

Life does not always go the way we plan – It is not always a bed of roses, for along the way, the thorns that co-exist with those roses will find ways to let you know they are still there. 

When some people enter into a time of sorrow, suffering, or difficulty, they can become lost.  A painful experience can cause a person to question the meaning of it all… But we must never forget that an individual can find true purpose and meaning – even in the face of severe and difficult situations.

Holocaust survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl tells this story

:

“Once, an elderly physician came to talk to me because of his severe depression.  He just could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before, and whom he had loved above all else.

Now, how could I help him?  What should I tell him?

Well, I refrained from telling him anything, but instead confronted him with the question, ‘What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!’  Whereupon I replied, ‘You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her of this suffering – to be sure – even at the price that you now have to survive and mourn her instead.’ 

The Doctor said no words, but shook my hand and calmly left my office.  In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning – such as the meaning of a loving sacrifice.”

In that moment I succeeded in changing his attitude toward his unalterable fate… helping him to see a meaning in his suffering.”

** When we are not able to change a situation we face – we are then challenged to change ourselves.  I am a firm believer the difficult times can always be redeemed in ways that (though difficult) can provide sincere meaning, purpose, and service to others.

What difficultly in your life needs to redeemed by discovering it’s meaning and purpose?