Pain, Guilt, & Death – Frankl’s Tragic Triad – three factors in life we can’t escape, but we can choose how we deal with them.

Fr. Richard Rohr, in Adam’s Return, writes,

It is the great teacher, although none of us want to admit it.  If we do not transform our pain, we will transmit it in some form.  Take than as an absolute.  If we do not learn this all-important spiritual lesson, at least one, maybe all, of the following things will happen:

1. We will become inflexible, blaming, and petty as we grow older.
2. We will need other people to hate in order to expel our inner negativity.
3. We will play the victim in some form as a means of false power.
4. We will spend much of our life seeking security and status as a cover-up for lack of a substantial sense of self.
5. We will pass on our deadness to our family, children, and friends.

These seem to be some fairly unpleasant consequences of not effectively dealing with pain.

Fortunately, Logotherapy has ideas on what to do to avoid these negative consequences – embrace pain, learn from it, turn it into achievement, discover meaning in it.

Pain – If we can’t escape it, we should at least learn from it.  And in learning from it, we transform it.

Men – or anyone who knows a man – I highly recommend Fr. Rohr’s book, Adam’s Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation.  In it, he discusses the benefits of initiation throughout history and culture, and what we are missing in our times.  I’m only a few chapters in, but is definitely giving me perspective on what it means to be a husband, father, brother, and friend – on what it means to be a man.  I’m sure I’ll write about it more, but you might enjoy reading it yourself.  – Dan