While I'm a great admirer of the Stoics and take much consolation from the work of Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus [1], I don't share their belief in a cosmic plan that determines the procession of earthly events. I'm not opposed to this idea, nor do I feel any need to disagree with those who hold such a belief. I know many people who subscribe to one version or another, and I find it easy to co-exist happily with them.
But I resist the idea that a cosmic plan should be interpreted as "everything happens for a reason." This seems to me an ineffective way of seeking to dismiss our natural responses to horror and tragedy, and it can be viewed as a variation on the widespread belief in a "just world," a concept first explored by psychologist Melvin Lerner:
Individuals have a need to believe that they live in a world where people generally get what they deserve. The belief that the world is just enables the individual to confront his physical and social environment as though they were stable and orderly. Without such a belief it would be difficult for the individual to commit himself to the pursuit of long range goals or even to the socially regulated behaviour of day to day life. Since the belief that the world is just serves such an important adaptive function for the individual, people are very reluctant to give up this belief, and they can be greatly troubled if they encounter evidence that suggests that the world is not really just or orderly after all. [2]
But belief in a just world is either a luxury, a form of privilege enjoyed by those who've never experienced horror or tragedy, or it's a coping mechanism, a way of discharging the cognitive dissonance that results when the inescapable reality of injustice and randomness in the distribution of horror and tragedy can no longer be avoided.
While by most standards I've lived an immensely privileged life, I've also experienced and observed sufficient horror and tragedy to convince me that the world is not just, that injustice is in fact common and all too random. So in writing now about the "fruit of suffering"--the benefits that may be derived from horrible and tragic experiences--I am not in the least suggesting that such suffering "happened for a reason," or that such fruit provides a "silver lining," or that any of this occurs in a "just world." And yet to deny the existence of these fruits would be to rob ourselves of a potent source of meaning. As Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, has written,
There are situations in which one is cut off from the opportunity to do one's work or enjoy one's life; but what can never be ruled out is the unavoidability of suffering. In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end. In other words, life's meaning is an unconditional one, for it even includes the potential meaning of unavoidable suffering...
[In Auschwitz] the question that beset me was, "Has all this suffering, all this dying around us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends on such a happenstance--as whether one escapes or not--ultimately would not be worth living at all." [3]
The last few weeks have been a time of great suffering indeed. In the midst of the profound upheaval caused by the global pandemic, one of the best friends I ever had died in an accident--and while I've walked and talked and cried with other people who knew him well, we couldn't even hug each other for fear of catching a potentially deadly disease. One week later my brother David closed his bar in Washington DC, before the official order, to protect his customers and employees from COVID-19, and he won't be able to earn a living until he re-opens. And I'm keenly aware that many people around the world have suffered far more than I have. I don't know what fruits other people may have derived from their suffering, but I'm increasingly aware of those that have been bestowed upon me:
Clarity
My values, the things that really matter to me, have never been more clear. The difference between needs and wants has never been starker. I need to stay healthy and to take good care of myself. I need to have thriving relationships with the people who are most important to me. I need to be of service to my clients and feel a sense of purpose in my work. Everything else is a mere want, a desire that may or may not get met--if so, I'll enjoy it, and if not, I'll survive.
Connection
I feel closer than ever to the people in my life--Amy, my family and friends, my clients. Just the other day I had the most heartfelt conversation with my Mom that I've ever had--and I'm 52! I've discovered new depths of friendship and shared countless stories with others who were close to Erik, our friend who died. I'd all give it all back to have him with us again, but I can't--so instead I cherish the way that he continues to have an impact on our lives after he's gone.
Gratitude
This isn't new for me, but even so, I have a heightened sense of appreciation for small moments of peace and beauty and light. Amy and I are adhering strictly to San Francisco's stay-at-home order, but we can still safely walk around our neighborhood, and we regularly stop to take in the ivory glow of calla lilies and the scent of jasmine. Yesterday we had to drive up to Sonoma to check on Merlin, Amy's retired horse, and it was a wonder to spend just a few hours in those green hills
Meaning
As an executive coach, my work has always provided me with a deep sense of purpose. But I've never felt more needed or more useful now that all day, every day, I spend my time talking with leaders about one of the greatest challenges they've faced in their professional lives. And I'm reminded of something I wrote on February 8th, the last day I saw my friend Erik, reflecting on mortality without grasping just how close at hand it was: "I find myself considering how I spend my time--and with whom--and the image of a candle burning down readily comes to mind. Instead of adding items to a 'bucket list,' I feel motivated to let things go, to devote less and less time to activities I find unrewarding, and to focus my energy on the people and experiences I find most meaningful." [5]
So having begun by rejecting one of the Stoics' core beliefs, I close by affirming the value of another, as articulated by Seneca:
It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is--the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. [6]
A newfound determination to bear this in mind, to invest my limited time wisely, to make the life I have left as meaningful as possible, may be the most valuable fruit this suffering has yielded.
Footnotes
[2] Just World Research and the Attribution Process: Looking Back and Ahead (Melvin Lerner and Dale Miller, Psychological Bulletin, 1978). For more on the "just world hypothesis," see Belief in a Just World: Research Progress Over the Past Decade (Adrian Furnham, Personality and Individual Differences, 2003).
[3] Man's Search for Meaning, pages 114-115 (Viktor Frankl, 1946/2006)
[4] I Will Miss You So Much, My Friend
[5] The Final Third (On Mortality, Values and Spending Time)
Photo by Torsten Behrens.
