You don’t have to turn every hard thing into a lesson. Some things you just survive and that’s enough.

There is a quiet pressure to extract meaning from everything difficult, as though an experience only counts if it improved you. Some things carry no lesson at all. They were hard, and what you got from them is that you are still here, which is a complete answer rather than a partial one. Hunting for the moral can become another job stacked on top of the first.

If you are still trying to work out what something was supposed to teach you, you are allowed to stop. Put it down as finished rather than unsolved. Meaning sometimes arrives years later, and it is under no obligation to.