Ikigai Thought for Today: Our Common Wound
Touched but not held by adversity.
Audio narration by David Marlow
I was going through a particularly rough stretch of my life. The expression…if it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all…felt like an appropriate descriptor.
In the middle of this difficult time, a friend invited me to lunch.
“You’re going through a rough stretch. Here’s something that helped me during a similar time. Maybe it will help you,” he said, sliding a slip of paper across the table.
Many people had tried to encourage me. One friend gave me the ultimate positive thinking guide, a copy of Norman Vincent Peale’s, ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’ hoping to help me out of my funk.
None of those hopeful or positive thinking messages had done anything to change my situation or improve my attitude.
Now, this friend gives me a handwritten note.
“Read it tonight when you have some quiet time.”
I shrugged and tucked it into my pocket, and finished lunch.
That evening I pulled the note out and read it. It wasn’t a pie-in-the-sky saying like your attitude determines your altitude.
The note shared thoughts from St. Paul…
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
“Yes! That’s exactly how I feel,” I shouted out loud.
Hard-pressed on every side…perplexed by circumstances…persecuted…struck down.
Then, reading it again, the other parts spoke to me.
Not crushed…not in despair…not abandoned…not destroyed.
Most of what friends shared, especially scripture, was centered around positive thinking.
This note from my friend admitted that life happened, and sometimes it sucked.
Something about that made me feel better.
For much of my life up to that point, I thought everyone’s life was largely problem-free.
Mine was a disaster, and there was a certain amount of self-judgment that went with feeling this way.
Why me? There must be something wrong with me.
WE are hard-pressed, the note said.
Maybe it wasn’t just me. If everybody has issues, maybe there isn’t anything wrong with me after all. Maybe that’s how life is sometimes.
Even with all the bad things going on, I wasn’t crushed nor abandoned, and I certainly wasn’t destroyed.
Realizing this represented a turning point in my young life.
"All of us have been wounded in some way, whether by violence, disease, or other personal tragedy…But though we can never pretend we have not been touched by adversity, we can refuse to be held by it."
Lauren Manning, 9/11 Survivor, in her book Unmeasured Strength
All of us have been wounded in some way.
We shouldn’t pretend life is easy and nothing ever goes wrong.
Though it is common to all, we can refuse to be held or defined by it.
Quest well.
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I'm with you on this, sweeping things under the rug does not work, nor do platitudes. Paul leans into and acknowledges his suffering many times. 2 Cor 1:8 "We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself." He is very honest with his feelings to himself and others. Meanwhile his long term perspective embraced one of the amazing paradoxes of the Christian life "when I am weak - I am strong".
Here is the full context in 2nd Corinthians. " Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 6 If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. 7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.
8 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters,[a] about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. 10 He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us
You and I have talked before about how that is one of my favorite scriptures, David. And Lauren Manning's words are so powerful in that context.
We have been wounded, and we cannot pretend we have not been touched by adversity, not we can refuse to be held by it.
I think this is the gift that Radical Acceptance brings. This morning I woke to the thought that at times when we may feel parts of our life are DIS-integrating, we find other tracks that give evidence of greater integration with our purpose. A truly universal feeling that the entropy of things breaking down are at the same time building toward a better tomorrow. Both things can be true. We just need to choose to look for them.