Being abruptly sidelined from my professional work and all that I thought was essential to who I was had me wrestling with the value of my altered life. When that niggling question about meaning and purpose eventually rears its head (and it surely does), most people afflicted by chronic pain tend to be hard on themselves when pain levels dictate what they can accomplish.

What I’m describing isn’t unique to me. Hundreds of thousands of us have life changing stories to tell. The kind of stories that typically evoke empathy and compassion, stories that catapult us into a rude awakening that nothing in life is permanent.

During various stages of my earlier life, any questions about life’s meaning or purpose seemed to have plausible answers. That’s probably because I was engaged in what I was supposed to be “doing” then in my socialized roles. Those earlier stages of life tend to be about identity building. It’s a process centered on exploring, defining, and constructing ones’ direction and purpose in life.

The importance of finding direction in life is stressed early on as part of what gives our lives purpose. In a variety of ways, our achievement-oriented culture telegraphs messages that "doing" is king, trumps "being" and determines our value, worth, and success.

It’s not always a balanced approach to the whole of our lives though.

Still, we make a concerted effort to prepare ourselves for autonomy by working hard to carve out our niches in the world. Like many of you, I pursued my goals and checked many of the boxes that spell success. But external success in business or any other endeavor doesn’t comprise the whole of our lives or all of who we are.

In mid-life when trigeminal neuralgia hit, I wasn’t ready to stop working or give up that identity. Nor was I prepared for all the other losses that would continue to follow. Being prematurely thrust into taking stock of the meaning and purpose of life carries unusual significance.

Having to whittle down your life and reconstruct your identity is a blow. So are the losses that follow. It can be demoralizing to admit that there’s much we can no longer “do” or handle in the same way.

Learning to befriend and value the “being” aspects of who we are takes time, encouragement, supportive people, and inner fortitude. You need to work through the internal inventory taking and conflicting dialogue that surrounds the shift in focus.

Internal hard work like that isn’t always visible or discernible to someone on the outside looking in. That’s why careless judgments or erroneous inferences often miss the mark.

Thankfully, I have been fortunate to experience the positive impact that encouragement, support, and understanding can bring at a time when it’s sorely needed. I’ve also watched hope rise, albeit a revised version, within others when they receive support from family, friends and like-minded, compassionate pain counterparts.

That kind of unconditional human regard has solidified my belief that who we are as human beings, not just human doings, is the nucleus of what cultivates meaning and purpose in our lives.

We become our best selves when we become aware of the kind of person we want to be and act accordingly. Those thoughtful behavioral choices and values determine the quality of our relationships with our selves and others in our wider human circle.

Otherwise, our unconscious choices and actions can carry unfortunate blind spots with many unintended consequences.

What matters most to one person may matter little to another. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer that can possibly address the personal interpretation each of us has about what’s meaningful or purposeful.

Given that reality, whether your life holds meaning or purpose can only be your call to make.

The misplaced judgment that any one of us altered by pain is lazy or selfish is beautifully countered by poet David Whyte (in Sweet Darkness) when he writes, “Anyone or anything that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”