The real sting in Lewis's observation lies not in celebrating suffering itself, but in suggesting that our struggles contain *information*—they teach us something about ourselves we couldn't learn any other way. Most motivational talk treats hardship as mere stepping stone to be overcome and forgotten, yet Lewis proposes something stranger: that the difficulty itself becomes part of who we are meant to become. Consider the parent who loses a child and, through that unbearable grief, develops a presence and wisdom that allows them to comfort others in ways the unbroken never quite manage. The extraordinary destiny isn't waiting on the far side of pain to reward us for enduring it; rather, the pain has already reshaped us into people capable of bearing something larger than ourselves.