Today’s Scripture Reading (November
7, 2019): Ecclesiastes 7
“What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' It is
probably an ancient saying. It has been attributed to many philosophers,
including Friedrich Nietzsche, who appears to have repeated variants of the
saying several times. But just because it is an old saying does not make it
true. Ellen Degeneres reshapes the saying this way. “What doesn't kill you puts
you in a whole lot of pain and makes you cry a lot and want to crawl in a hole
forever and live with rodents.” I think we have all been there. (And that might
be a surprise to multitudes who believe that their time of pain is a journey
through which no one else has ever had to travel.)
So, just to be clear, I know intimately the kind
of suffering of which Ellen speaks. But the larger question is who is right;
Nietzsche and the philosophers or Ellen? And maybe the answer is both. Ellen
speaks of what we want to do when we experience that kind of pain. We want “to
crawl in a hole forever and live with rodents.” But we know that we can’t. (By
the way, even Ellen realizes that she can’t let herself crawl into that hole.)
If we do, then life ends. Most of us know that even if we creep into the whole
for a short period because that action could be the end of us. We have to drag
ourselves out of the hole and put one foot in front of the other and continue
on the journey.
The Teacher tends to be negative or maybe overstresses
the negative experiences in our lives. And this is true with this statement. We
know that frustration is not better than laughter. But what is true is that we
might chase after laughter more than we should. What we need in life is
balance. Frustration and tragedy will eventually crush us and force us into
that hole with the rodents if there are not a few moments when the frustration
is released in our laughter. Health comes from balance. Frustration and the
negative moments of life do not make us stronger unless there are times of
laughter when we get to heal.
The truth is that even the Teacher knows this
reality. He knows that frustration is not better than laughter, but rather that
we should not believe that the success of our lives is dependent on the
presence of laughter in our lives. We need laughter, but we also need
frustration and pain. And I know that the Teacher knows this truth because he
is the one that wrote these words. There is “a
time to weep and a time to laugh, [and] a time to mourn and a time to dance”
(Ecclesiastes 3:4). Both are present in life, and both are necessary for us to
lead healthy lives. In times of frustration, we can allow those times to make
us stronger, as long as there are times when we can laugh.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ecclesiastes
8
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