While pain can reveal your heart, it is not the only thing.

This is an interesting string of ideas.

If followed, it begs the question of meaning almost right out of the gate.

For example, money.

We go to school, in hopes of a good job. We go to work, to provide for the ones we love. And we save to provide for the unknown future.

What if all of that was meaningless? What if wealth rendered every discussion involving this null?

If you can suddenly do and buy everything you ever dreamed of one-thousand times over, the question almost immediately becomes: What now?

Will you be selfish? Giving? Change the world? What is even worth changing? And why?

This is also true for power.

If you suddenly have all the power, what is worth doing? What should you ignore? Who is worth saving? What has value? And why?

Finally, on pain, the idea of great loss is nothing but a giant question of meaning.

Would you love something the same if it lasted forever?

I hated that it took pain to open the curtain revealing the man’s heart, but it did and it does. We don’t know how much we are capable of loving until the people we love are being taken away, until a beautiful story is ending.

–Donald Miller, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years