WISDOM IS OFTEN BORN IN TOUGHEST TIMES
Since almost a year ago, I've been interviewing people about happiness, what it means to them, and what helped them get to where they are now. I've been looking to learn how others like me overcame obstacles, and how did they built up the courage to make changes to their lives.
About half way through the interviews, I noticed that when I asked people about something they’ve accomplished or they’re proud of, many began their 'success' story by talking about a particularly tough life experience. Practically every other person mentioned a challenging, or even tragic event that ended up changing the entire course of their life. Some failed to get into the grad school they wanted, or failed to get the job or lover they wanted, while others lost a sibling, a friend, or a parent, while others had been diagnosed with cancer.
They emerged from these tough times stronger, more determined, and somehow ended up more fulfilled than before. They took control over their life, course corrected, and reshaped their path. They emerged wiser and generally more alive than they were before.
This finding made me wonder: is it necessary that we experience some level of suffering in order to set forth on the path that makes us most alive, and ultimately happiest? It made me reflect on my own life, on life changes I had made, and on moments of deep suffering.
Here is the toughest one.
On the evening of January 16th, 2010, I went to a dinner party by one of our friends. I remember precisely this date, because it was the first day I walked out of my house after ten days of self-confinement. I had been staying home because I had been paralyzed with sadness. About two weeks prior, my sister was in a car accident. She passed away, along with her husband and teenage daughter. Her six year old son miraculously survived the crash. Caring for my toddler and preschool age girls helped me raise up every morning and have a reason to keep going in those dark, strange, lifeless days. Every day I would find flowers and prepared food containers carefully placed on our house’s doorsteps by dear friends.
A few years before, my sister and her husband were building their first home back in Romania. “I wish I could see you more often. I wish I could stay an extended period of time here with you all, so our kids could spend more time together, and to show our kids where mama’s from” I said, looking at the drawings my brother-in-law made of their future 3-level house he designed. The house the two of them designed is still standing.
My sister’s passing threw me in the darkest depths of my soul. The time I spent in quiet isolation, felt empty of life, slow, but eventually healing. It was a time when I didn’t rush, I didn’t look at my future or even past, and I didn’t beat myself up over not having x, y, or z. My hectic life slowed down to a halt. When I was able to pick up the pace again, I see now that I was headed in a slightly different direction, which eventually became a significantly better, more honest and more intentionally chosen path than where I was before the accident.
In the darkness of those grieving weeks, I thought with much sadness about my plans to see my sister more often, about reconnecting with my homeland which I had left before I was an adult, and about my wish for my growing kids to spend time there. It was too late now to see my sister. But it wasn’t too late to go back to Romania for a while. A dim light of hope emerged, and it continued to grow stronger over the following years.
Over time, the thought to take off for a while became a wish, and something I started to fantasize about. I was increasingly more disillusioned with my corporate career, and began dreaming about quitting one day, leave it all behind, and take a year off to live in my homeland of Romania and spend more time with my family back there.
Five years after my sister’s passing we did move to Romania for an extended period of time. It took five years of dreaming, three years of careful consideration, and a year of planning to take off, but we did it. Would I have had the idea, the courage to consider moving, and eventually would I have actually left everything behind and move there for a year? Probably not. And I would have regretted not having the will, determination, boldness, or industriousness to do it.
So here is a question I've been pondering upon. Do we need to go down in order to reach inside and get in touch with our core, before we can realize our deepest wishes, and have the strength to make a change in our life? Do we need the push in our back, that level of urgency that only suffering seems to provide? Do we need suffering to hold a mirror to our soul?
If that’s the case, should we rethink pain and suffering as perhaps source of strength rather than weakness?
It’s difficult to estimate the power of ideas born in the darkest of times. I think courageous, life-changing ideas are first born out of our inner instinct to survive. Those courageous ideas bring a flicker of light into our heart's yearnings, guiding our steps toward healing. Such ideas sometimes become the tool that not only guides us out of the water for air, but they can also become the force that propels us to climb mountains we didn’t think possible.
