Every life has a measure of sorrow, and sometimes this is what awakens us.
There's a quiet subversion here worth noticing: Tyler isn't claiming sorrow *teaches* us or *strengthens* us, which would be the expected sentiment. Instead, he says it *awakens* us—suggesting we're half-asleep to begin with, and grief is often the first thing that breaks through our numbness. A person might go years attending to obligations, checking boxes, never quite present until loss arrives and suddenly the ordinary becomes vivid again. That's why a friend's betrayal sometimes matters more than years of distant kindness; pain has a way of making us suddenly, startlingly conscious of what we actually value.
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason...”
Marcus Aurelius“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. I...”
Viktor Frankl“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”
Seneca