Don’t look for a reason for your tragedy, look for meaning
The drive to power through loss comes from mindfulness of grief and acceptance
Over the last 3 days, 3 interesting things happened to me. On Sunday I met a colleague who used to work with TWB about 8yrs back who has come back to work with me. A talented programmer, he lost pretty much everything other than the shirt on his back and he is consumed by the question – why did it happen to him? Then on Monday I was giving a motivational talk at a company when I talk about my own life experiences and “How to be an Entrepreneur on a Salary”. Many people cringed because it is difficult for them to fathom what I went through, and most importantly why? Then yesterday I was with a person who is a spiritual guide to scores of people. He spent a great deal of time telling me that most of the great upsets of my life had a reason and that it shows me I should not focus on dogs, only focus on myself and look for a lower ambition and quality of life.
All these made me cringe in turn. And I ended up asking myself why am I upset about someone finding a reason in their misfortune, or in mine? Isn’t this what pretty much everyone does — looks for a reason for any tragedy that befalls and then make this ‘learning’ into new normal? People who lose a fortune learn to live at a smaller scale, people who have lost in love vow never to love again, people who have lost a dog will never keep a dog again — even though in the scheme of life these are not even real tragedies but mere blips.
The reason for your misfortune
It is an evolutionary trait that people look for patterns in their lives and that includes in their own behavior and that of others. A lot of our responses, fears, motivations come from there. When you’re walking on a lonely stretch hearing footsteps but not being able to see it makes you wary of danger. On the other hand footsteps in the kitchen mean your spouse or kid is back home. By extension, we are trained to look for cause and consequence. What could the cause be of this extraordinary misfortune that has come upon me — this heartache that doesn’t go, this failure at work, this loss of business, this debilitating illness? The reality is that I have suffered not one but all these setbacks and it is not that I have not asked myself these questions. I have lost the person I relied on and loved the most, I lost a successful company and went from being wealthy to bankrupt, I’ve suffered the public humiliation of an arrest covered in newspapers for days and I live with not with one but at least 4 life-threatening conditions. Surely there was a reason each of these things had happened? Surely I could have avoided each of these and maybe I should be wary of trust and looking for contentment over ambition, peace over passion.
The problem looking for reasons
Since all these misfortunes did not come at the same time I have had a lifetime to think through some of this. I realized that there was actually no cause and effect, no reason for any of these things had happened. Most of these are purely random events. Life, for the most part, will not follow the script you wrote. Like someone said life is already happening to you when you are looking for it.
To begin with, we look for reasons for great misfortune in the wrong places — we reason it must be some greater purpose, or some omnipotent force of the universe or some preordained script of our lives. Loss of love and trust of the woman you loved must then mean that in the future you will not find that true love or all women are untrustworthy. The truth is entirely the opposite. The loss of love is a chance occurrence, there is no pattern and it does not point to anything for the future. Asking yourself the reason, therefore, is asking the wrong question.
The other danger in looking for reasons makes you keep revisiting the past to look and obsess with ‘why’ or ‘why me’. It makes you lazy in thinking if this would have not happened I could have been, say, as successful as someone else. It makes you accept reality as you see at the present. It saps energy and vitality from you. It was this what was making me upset – because I was being told there was a reason, there is a pattern and that pattern holds into the future. And I would not allow my future to be held hostage by anything.
I am not alone feeling that. I find that the people I admire most have 2 things in common (1) they have overcome tragedy and pain that would immobilize most people & (2) they rejected the notion of there being a reason for every loss and failure. They rejected it because it makes them avoid the responsibility of making hard choices, and they know that you have to take responsibility to create future success which must now be built on greater odds.
Looking for meaning
Not looking for a reason, but looking for meaning is the real question to ask. Now that this has happened what meaning does it have for me and what meaning does my life have? Irrespective of the reasons for your catastrophic failure, you do not control the past. But you do control the future. You can determine the trajectory of your life and give it purpose. If you look at the most successful people those who have invented things or discovered new worlds or created opportunities for others — they have all found meaning in great odds. The world is better because of people who have lost a child and created schools for orphans, or lost a loved one to disease and started a hospital to cure others of that disease. For the most part, the people who do these extraordinary things are not people with extraordinary means, but they have become people with extraordinary resolve. The resolve comes because suddenly that overwhelming tragedy has given them meaning.
I have found for myself that the reason bad things happened isn’t that it was some pattern in my life. They happened for reasons I don’t understand, or even accept. That also does not mean I am helpless because I have found meaning. Finding meaning is not like a light goes on in your head, it is not easy because it requires you to resolve many unanswered questions, it requires you to plan and act from a place of great adversity. Most of all it requires continuous and lifelong action.
It is hard to look for meaning when you are in shock or grieving but it is creating meaning that has guided me through failure and loss. Each time I’ve suffered a life-threatening condition I have trained myself not ask why or how long do I have to live, but what to do with the years I may have. Indeed from all my own catastrophic failures in loss or money or trust or love, I’ve had to create meaning. It has meant the difference between being a victim of my circumstances or creating my own future, the difference between despair and hope, of living with failure or creating success.
Looking for meaning in great tragedy has taught me not to look at how unfair life has been but to look at it with gratitude. Not to look at betrayal but at trust. Not to look at the loss of love but at love. Not be a victim of the past but value opportunities it has created. Looking for meaning I realized life is not meant to be fair, it just is. And it is beautiful if you find meaning in it.