When times are good, when nice things are happening, when life is rocking on nice and stable, it’s easy for us to figure we’ve got it all figured out. But then… something else happens.

Disaster strikes. Tragedy happens. Heartache and loss and pain cut deep into our lives. And we start wondering if maybe, after all, life might be just a little more complicated than we like to think.

It’s easy to figure out the easy stuff – or to think that we have. But when the tough times hit, that always calls for us to dig down deeper into our relationship with the Universe itself. Because, let’s face it, there’s something in us that demands meaning from every single thing that happens.

Times are good? The answer to that one is easy – it means I’m okay.

But when the times are not good, when everything is suddenly crap on top of crap, then we have to come up with something – some explanation – that doesn’t mean God doesn’t love us any more. And finding that explanation can take some serious soul searching.

In the news these days is a huge disaster, and it’s prompting even more of these introspections than usual because the victims are so near us, and so apparently blameless. Why – WHY – do these things happen?

Today’s guest contributor Peter Vajda asks us to take a long, thoughtful look at…

Haiti – and a Deeper Meaning
By Peter Vajda, Ph.D, C.P.C.

“Life has to come through the heart for it to be meaningful.”
- Anonymous

I seldom write about “current events.” However, the disaster that is taking place in Haiti has grabbed me and won’t let go. So, like so many others, I feel compelled to ask “why?”

How often as children did we ask our parents or primary caregivers “Why?” Why is the sky blue? Why don’t I feel well? Why did mommy/daddy leave? Why don’t fish drown?

While someone was often able to answers our questions, there were times that there were no answers, or no truly satisfying answers. Sometimes we heard, “Because that’s the way God made it,” or “Because that’s the way it is,” or “because it’s a mystery.”

While many of us continued to ask “why?” even when there was no answer, many of us stopped asking. Even when we stopped asking, however, the question or the curiosity was always there. It never went away. Today, the question still remains for most of us as does our wanting to find answers – answers that help us lead a meaningful life and answers that help us make meaning of life.

We ask why as a search for meaning, and the search for meaning is often an attempt to grasp on to the significance of events and circumstances that are hidden, unclear, and not obvious. Sometimes the answers to “why?” are objective, factual and impersonal.

But when disaster strikes, there’s often a bigger “WHY?” – that is unexplainable by the simple information of facts, physics, and fault lines. This bigger “WHY?” is about pain and suffering and the meaning of it all. This bigger “WHY?” is about separation and death.

“The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.”
- Carl Jung

The ultimate “why?,” more than anything, is about “me” – not from an egocentric perspective but from a place of curiosity about why I exist and why I’m having the experiences – near and far – I am in my life. While I may not be directly connected to the disaster in Haiti, in a way, I am. The spiritual, soul-based questions are “how so?” and “why?”.

The search for meaning does not reduce or eliminate the pain and suffering, but it allows us to explore death, dying and immortality from a place of equanimity and peace. Understanding the meaning of disaster, from a deeper place, does not heal the pain, but it can open our heart to the experience and expression of love.

Human be-ings are the only species that has a penchant for seeking meaning – it’s in our DNA, our cells. In times of tragedy, travesty and tumult not to seek meaning, not to ask “why?” is an attempt to function without our heart and soul. Moving through life – the good, the bad and the ugly – from a heart and soul perspective is the way we find answers when we ask “why?” – and the way we give true meaning to our lives. Haiti, as all disasters, has a meaning for each of us. The question, of course, is “why?”

“When we seek for connection, we restore the world to wholeness. Our seemingly separate lives become meaningful as we discover how truly necessary we are to each other.”
- Margaret Wheatley

So, our $10 food for thought questions are:

• Do you ever explore your motives for your everyday actions?
• Name a recent important or emotional experience you had and ask “Why?” – what was the deeper meaning for you and why did this experience happen FOR you?
• Find a time and space to go into deep silence. What deeper thoughts or urges come to you? And, why?
• Why do you think you’re on the planet? What makes life truly meaningful for you? How so?

SpiritHeart – Coaching for Essential Well-BE-ing
— at the intersection of body, mind, emotion and spirit
Values-Based Coaching, Counseling and Training
Phone: 770.804.9125 (Atlanta, GA, USA)
E-mail: pvajda [AT] spiritheart [DOT] net
www.spiritheart.net and www.ahchiyo.com
“What makes you think work and meditation are two different things?”
— Buddha at Work

Back to Charles:
While this brief article doesn’t presume to offer any definitive answers, it does bring us some guiding principles for seeking our own answers. And ultimately, it’s only your own answers that have any real meaning. Someone else’s answers, no matter how much they struggled to find them, no matter how hard-won, have little direct value to you or to me.

This may be because it’s the struggle for resolution and clarity that’s the real answer. It’s the struggle itself that helps reveal to us who we, individually, actually are.

When we’re gathered around the community fires at night, we never tell stories of the easy days we’ve had. No, we always share the stories of our struggles, our challenges, our failures and triumphs in the face of trials. These are the things we laugh about and share with others. In fact, it’s these hard times, these mighty efforts to overcome that define who we truly are.

So while I don’t advise you to go and seek out the hardest, most terrible experiences you can uncover, you’ll probably find that when you do accidentally stumble into them, they’re the experiences that help you know yourself better.

Enlightenment is not always sudden flashes of heavenly wisdom. Sometimes enlightenment is realizing that you have resources that enable you to overcome challenges you’d never imagined in your easy times. Sometimes it’s a larger sense of who you are and what you’re capable of that is the real enlightenment.

So what’s the meaning of Haiti? You’ll have to ask the people experiencing it. Many of them will be finding it right now. And I suspect that, for every one of them it’ll be a different and intensely personal meaning.

Cheers from warm and smiling Thailand,
Charles