When I had my heart attack in 2005, I had an awakening. I learned that life is too short to just live it casually – as if nothing important is happening. But I had a hard time reconciling what I had learned with what I saw most people doing.
In fact, I thought there was something wrong with me. I saw people who were in for their 2nd and 3rd heart attack. I spoke with people who had survived cancer, and so many of them had an attitude like, “That sucked. Well then, back to my old life.”
I thought maybe I was not seeing the world correctly. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe there’s something wrong with me because I didn’t want to go back to my old way of living.
There isn’t much out there that helps us emerge from a traumatic experience with the intention that it should change us. In fact, most things out there help us cope and go back to our old life.
My business coach recently said that there are two kinds of people who come out of a life threatening experience. There are those who decide that their experience means something, and that it’s our responsibility to make it mean something good. He said that in making our experience mean something good, we are honoring our experience, ourselves, and those who had a similar experience before us – especially those who didn’t make it.
Then there are those who decide the experience doesn’t mean anything. They go back to their old life as if nothing happened. Perhaps these folks are just glossing over life as they live through it. Or perhaps these folks are afraid of what their experience might mean, and that it would be too much for them. So they look the other way and try not to think about their experience.
I don’t know if you’ve had tough, challenging experiences. Maybe you, too, have stared death in the face and are a second chancer. Maybe you grew up in an abusive household. Maybe you have lost loved ones. Maybe you had a relationship fall apart. Maybe you had a debilitating disease. Maybe you’ve seen war. Maybe you just made bad decisions, hit rock bottom, and are now recovering.
I don’t know which group you identify with – those who make meaning from the experience or not. All I know is that life is not meaningless. And we can’t go on pretending that it is.
We must honor our experiences. We must let our experiences change us – as they should. This is part of our growth.
We can redeem our crappy experiences by leveraging them for good. We can learn from the experience. We can help others through similar experiences. We can use them to inspire and transform others. There are so many ways we can redeem our deep, dark, crappy, days.
Are you willing to honor your experiences? Tell us about them.
