Meaning Is Not A Bow You Tie Around Suffering

A therapist once told me to read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

I wanted to throw it out a window.

Possibly at the therapist, though I am steadfastly nonviolent and also windows are expensive.

I was not ready for it. I was in the middle of a life that had been broken open, and the suggestion that I should find meaning in what had happened to me felt almost obscene.

I understand Frankl differently now.

He was not saying suffering is good. He was not saying everything happens for a reason. I do not believe that. Some things are simply terrible. Some things are wrong. Some things should not happen.

But Frankl was writing about the possibility that even when happiness is unavailable, meaning may not be.

That distinction matters.

Meaning is not a bow tied around suffering. It is not a moral obligation to become grateful for catastrophe. It is not the cheery insistence that the worst thing that happened to you was secretly the best thing that happened to you.

No.

Meaning is what becomes possible after we stop asking suffering to justify itself.

For a long time, I could not make sense of what had happened to me. But eventually I could ask what I was going to do with the fact that it had happened. That was different. It did not excuse anything. It did not redeem anything. It did not make the damage smaller.

It gave me somewhere to stand.

There is a cruelty in rushing people toward meaning before they are ready. But there is also a cruelty in pretending that survival alone is the end of the story.

Sometimes meaning comes later.

But when it comes, it can become a road.

Emily Hunt-Adiletta OBE is a bestselling author and keynote speaker. Booking: booking@anthroadvisory.com