Out of every pain comes some good

Written by Joe Pisani
Monday, 07 December 2009 16:50

On a tour boat traveling across Lake Winnipesaukee on a beautiful autumn afternoon, the kind of day you wish would last forever, I found myself sitting beside a middle-aged woman glued to her cell phone with the painful intensity of someone about to get test results from her doctor.

While everyone else was enthralled by the waterfront mansions, she was sequestered in a corner, talking in a loud voice that even the churning of the engines couldn’t drown out.

It was the kind of conversation I hear from time to time on Metro-North when people shamelessly broadcast their personal problems for everyone to share.

I cringed when she growled into the phone, “You’re damn right I’m miserable! But you know what? That’s what happens when you spend your whole life unloved and unappreciated.”

Desperate outbursts like that make me realize I don’t have a monopoly on pain.

“Unloved and unappreciated” could be the epitaph for many of us in this age of misery characterized by unemployment problems, marriage problems, family problems, teenager problems, financial problems, emotional problems, addiction problems, love problems and health problems. Pick one, or several.

Most of us don’t want to hear about another person’s difficulties because we have plenty of our own, and we’ve became desensitized to suffering -- with millions of people losing their jobs, their homes, their health care, their health and just about everything else you can lose.

For many Americans, it will be hard to be thankful this Thanksgiving, and when they try to count their blessings, they may come up empty-handed.

If I were Buddha, I’d shrug it off by suggesting, “Life is suffering, so what’s the big deal?” If I were a Stoic, I’d probably slip into fatalistic indifference and lower my expectations about finding joy and happiness.

Those responses, however, aren’t particularly appealing when you sit around the turkey, bow your head in prayer and struggle to find an ounce of gratitude. Of course, all too often, the things we should be thankful for are the things we take for granted.

Sometimes in order to be thankful, you have to be hopeful and believe things will get better, because when life gets hard, there’s not too much you can do except take it a day at a time.

I still remember when my father got sober after a lifetime of alcoholism, and it seemed a whole new world lay ahead of him. For the first time, he was thankful and understood the meaning of gratitude — and then, he was diagnosed with throat cancer and given a 50 percent chance to live. It wasn’t fair. It didn’t make sense.

As I was trying to decipher God’s thinking and figure out why this happened now, my father said to me, “Out of everything comes good ... for those who trust.”

How could that be? I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. I refused to believe it. Out of everything comes good?

Today ... I believe it.

Joe Pisani can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .