The real gift here isn't permission to endure hardship—it's the suggestion that pain functions as a corrective lens, not a punishment. Williams points to something we rarely admit: that our worst seasons often arrive *because* we've been living half-asleep, ignoring the small warnings that accumulated into crisis. When someone loses a job they'd grown complacent in, or a relationship fractures they'd stopped tending, the sting forces them to notice what they'd normalized away. That's different from the hollow "everything happens for a reason" platitude; this is about paying the price of inattention, then finally seeing clearly.