From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life

by Arthur C. Brooks

Vulnerability can be about little things or intensely painful personal experiences. In 2019, for example, the comedian Stephen Colbert elicited an enormous amount of public admiration when he was asked in an interview by CNN’s Anderson Cooper about a plane crash that killed Colbert’s father and two of his brothers when he was ten years old. Cooper had heard Colbert say previously that he had learned to “love the thing that I most wish had not happened.” He asked Colbert to clarify this extraordinary statement. “It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering,” replied Colbert. “I don’t want it to have happened . . . but if you are grateful for your life . . . then you have to be grateful for all of it. You can’t pick and choose what you’re grateful for.”[10] Beyond simply demonstrating incredible vulnerability, Colbert is saying that he found strength in his tragedy. The psychiatrist Victor Frankl said much the same thing in his famous book Man’s Search for Meaning, which chronicled in intimate detail his time imprisoned by the Nazis in the Auschwitz concentration camp.[11] “When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.” Frankl felt that people could fin...