Arthur C. Brooks argues that suffering teaches meaning more than anything else. He traces his own life through his mother's death, business crisis, illness, and fear, showing how each trial clarified what matters. People surveyed about meaning consistently point to their worst experiences, not their best ones.
The most important teacher of the meaning of your life is your suffering. It's the most important. And one of the greatest ways for you to miss the meaning of your life is for you to try to avoid your suffering. Give me an example. So nobody ever said, I really figured out what I was made of that week at the beach in Ibiza. No. They talked about when my mom died, when I almost lost my business, when I flunked out of college, when I got really sick, when I was truly scared and I made my way through it. When I understood, when I went through that suffering was my teacher about who I am as a person and the meaning of my life. If you You find is that in large groups of people, you find that when you ask them to talk about the meaning of their life, they always talk about their terrible times. They always talk about their suffering. Always. That's the way it is. And if we have a culture that tries to get rid of pain, you have a culture that gets rid of meaning.
