A Life Worth Living

Why is life such a painful thing? People get hurt, they get sick, and they die. People are abused, shamed, and killed. Why is there such pain? Why can't life be a fairytale, where we live happily ever after?

It's because pain is what makes life meaningful. If we don't know loss, how would we know how to value something? If we don't suffer, how will we know how to thrive? If pain and suffering make lives meaningful, then why do they only seem to destroy?

The answer is simple. We let them. We choose not to learn. To let the pain change us, to embitter, to mold, and to freeze our hearts into people we can't even look at in the mirror. We give into the darkness that is in all of us, and refuse to acknowledge and accept healing from the light.

People who haven't ever suffered haven't lived. No matter your station, your job, your family name, people feel pain. It's an ingrained part of us to ignore the light, because the light challenges us to do something about the pain, and the loss, and the suffering. It demands that we look for healing, for love, for life. And it demands that we set aside our pride, our self esteem, our lives, us. It asks us to give everything to someone else, because if our heart doesn't clench at another's pain, then we haven't suffered enough.

Those that accept the light, they give their pride, their suffering, their success, and their shame. They give it all. They give up their life, their name, their fame, who they are. They cast down that which they idolize and they say "No more!", because they have suffered, and the people they see everyday, those whom they pass in the grocery store, who work at the mall or the car wash, those people they just glimpse in the bookstore, because those people have suffered, and who needs grace more than those who have never known undeserved, voluntary love.

So they give. And the suffering that they found in darkness gave them a purpose. It tore them down, and allowed the light to reach down and pull them up, hand over hand, as they were raised up. The darkness that hardens man's heart does not raise people up. It kills, steals, and destroys. But those deaths, those stolen things, and obliterations, those brought them to their knees. And instead of screaming at the sky and holding on to the comfort of darkness like so many of us love to do, they gave a plea. "Help me. I cannot help myself."

Not a cry of self worthlessness, but of utter humility. They do not make much of who they are. They do not dare. They simply say yes to the light, and to the challenge that awaits. Bad things don't happen to good people. Bad things happen to people shrouded in darkness and in hatred, in self love and in idolization.

Instead of asking yourself "why me!", ask "What can I do with what has been done to me?" Because that will give your life meaning, and the pain meaning. It gives you a life worth living. And that, is the most precious thing of all.

A Pubber since July 2015.