One Apple A Day #1178

Seek the meaning, and you'll find the healing.

Image by Xiao feng Lew from Pixabay

Seek the meaning, and you'll find the healing.

I jotted these words on my notepad on the journey home from India. I was pondering on the many inspiring conversations I had. One, in particular, touched me deeply. It was a conversation about pain, suffering and healing. We talked about the emotional wounds we are often left with after a painful experience. Wounds so hard to heal that we may even become accustomed to the suffering. Sometimes it may even define us.

How can we move beyond that suffering? 

How can we let it go to be free from it?

In my limited experience, I discovered that when I can find a meaning to that pain, it fades away. What I am left with is an inner shift. A learning that becomes a transformation. Sometimes the meaning comes with the pain itself. Most of the time, it takes me a while to find it; days, months or even years. But eventually, I'll find it. And the awareness that one day I will find meaning is already part of the healing.

In his book Man's search for meaning, Viktor Frankl identifies three possible ways to find meaning: through our work by doing something significant, through love by caring for another person, and through courage in difficult times.