How do you integrate the potential for emotional outcomes, like disappointment or heartbreak,
into your understanding of personal growth and your ongoing development of your sense of self?
Those experiences are just as valid as experiences such as excitement and joy. And I think we
perhaps grow more from the so called 'negative' emotions, because they cause us to slow down a
little a bit and to feel our hurts. They can cause us to look deeper into ourselves for
solutions because we're motivated to figure out how to stop the pain. They can point to problems
in ourselves or our relationships that we would otherwise ignore or turn a blind eye to until
we're forced to stare at it because of the pain. That's not always the case, sometimes things
just happen to us, a child is killed in a car accident, a parent gets cancer, life is chaotic,
but even those events can be used as a tool to slow me down to evaluate what's really important
to me, where am I spending my precious time and resources, am I still working towards being the
type of person I want to be or have I become complacent, or do I even want to work towards it
right now. Maybe I'm tired for a season, and just want to rest in being and not constantly
striving in becoming, and sometimes those moments of despair let us see things from a
perspective we normally don't get to see things, and can be honored as something special and
valuable to the human experience.