Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable — perhaps everything.
In our lives, especially as we get older, we begin to realise that deep meaning in life is derived from deep suffering. This is not something we are prepared to hear, let alone tolerate, in the first half of our lives. The ego’s prescribed agenda is clear: be in control, be liked, and be safe.
But that’s not the agenda of the soul. And neither does the soul care for that agenda. It cares for the person beneath the ego superimposition. And it is rather relentless in its objective to enlarge your life and to create true meaning with this life you have been gifted.
James Hollis puts it plainly: “We are meaning-seeking, meaning-creating animals.” In the context of modern life, where we live in a state of distraction — especially from our souls — he writes, “Whenever we can bring consciousness to the meeting place with soul, we will be changed and, whether we wish or not, enlarged.”
I believe that suffering lies in those final few words — “whether we wish or not.” No one willingly leaps into suffering and wishes it upon themselves. No one chases after grief. No one happily ends a marriage or celebrates the news of an illness. No. But whether we wish it or not, these things happen. Suffering happens.
Hollis continues: “In the midst of these psychological dislocations, we frequently consider ourselves victimised, and cannot imagine that there could be some enlarging purpose in our suffering.” Now on this point he also says, with great respect, “For those in the midst of suffering, talk of enlargement seems gratuitous, or insensitive…” and yet he concludes, “Much later, they often come to realise that they have acquired a more differentiated consciousness, a more complex understanding of themselves, and, greatest of all, a more interesting life.”
Maybe we wished this as a final result at some point, but we didn’t wish the process by which we arrive at the result. That is where meaning can be found.
When Hollis writes about suffering, he refers to the “dark woods.” We enter our dark wood in midlife. This is the initiation (once again, whether we wish it or not) into the Second Half of Life. Normally when this happens, chaos and confusion ensue. The ego goes into overdrive to keep a grip on the status quo, but the soul — your true self — will not have it anymore. Freedom is calling. Enlargement is calling. Calling, is calling.
“What brings us to our various dark woods is frequently interpreted as an external violation of the soul, an intrusion on a smoothly flowing life, whether from acts of others, from the fates, or by our own choices. Yet just as often, inexplicably, it is the soul itself that has brought us to that difficult place in order to enlarge us, to ask more of us than we planned on giving,” Hollis reflects.
When Jung says meaning makes things endurable — probably everything — it is exactly in these confused, alone, dark-woods moments of suffering. Viktor Frankl put it like this: “Man is ready and willing to shoulder any suffering as soon and as long as he can see a meaning in it.”
That’s the key: to see the meaning in it. To find the perspective. From Hollis’ point of view: “Only through making the meaning of that suffering and its agenda for spiritual enlargement conscious can we ever emerge from the dark wood.”
Both these insights by Frankl and Hollis point to two things: firstly, we need to see the meaning, which means to bring it to consciousness. Secondly, assume the soul has an agenda — to bring spiritual enlargement. Even this is being conscious of your reality — that there is meaning and purpose in what feels utterly meaningless. Frankl again: “In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
The sacrifice is mostly the agenda of the ego, especially its coping mechanisms.
I’ll end off with a quote from another Jame - this time, Jesus’ little brother:
‘Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.’*
The path to maturity, to completeness, to ‘not lacking anything’, kicks off with ‘trials of many kinds’.
And for this, you need a little faith—trusting the dark woods do end somewhere.
James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up (New York: Avery, Penguin, 2005).
C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), 340.
Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006), 113.
*James 1:2–4, New International Version (NIV).