Without challenge, we would not know what altruism and compassion are- there would be no need for it.
We can certainly interpret our personal disasters as negative experiences- but how we cope with them afterward is where the greatest potential for personal growth lies. Certainly we are allowed to own our pain, and to grieve for our losses...to expect otherwise is to invalidate our experience as humans. But in order to rise and achieve something more, we must break our patterns and introduce a little chaos- rising up out of the pool of stale suffering- and do something entirely different to break out of the entropy.
Too often, we see only what we expect to see- and any deviation from this is judged to be a disruption.
Perhaps occasional disruption is good for the soul.
None of this is to say that we should surrender to evil. There IS suffering and oppression in the world, and it certainly IS appropriate to do what we can to alleviate it. The point here is to acknowledge that the purpose of our lives is not to illuminate every shadow, or to drive chaos from the universe- but to learn their uses, and seize the opportunities that they provide. Each obstacle can be used to construct a stairway to enlightenment- and when the stairway crumbles, it's time to take aim at a new understanding of enlightenment, and build again.
Anita Perez