Destruction is an inevitable part of life, often raising questions about its purpose and meaning.
Is it divine punishment or karma for past mistakes?
Is it an indication of personal unworthiness?
Is it random and purposeless?
OR is there a deeper meaning that is more relevant in today’s society?
Many people grapple with these thoughts when faced with loss, failure, or sudden upheaval. For sensitive souls, these questions arise often in life and especially after emotional abuse.
It’s easy to fall into the belief that destruction is a consequence of something you’ve done wrong.
This perspective, while common, places us in a cycle of guilt and self-blame, making it difficult to see beyond the pain.
In this episode, let’s explore the real purpose of destruction on a personal and collective level.
Change is here – Whether You’re Ready or Not
2025 is a year of so much change. And as you may know, human beings don’t usually just decide to make changes in life. It usually takes crises, tragedies, and upheavals to help people examine their life choices.
My initial plan was to make this episode be about the different types of dysfunctional families, but for some reason, I was moved to expand on episode 3, which was exploring what it meant when you see some aspects of your life start to fall apart.
And I am following that intuition.
This message for you is timely because 2025 is a year of change, and since you are sensitive to energy, you tend to be affected more by events happening around you, especially when you pay too much attention to the news and are not on a media diet.
So, by sharing this episode, hopefully you can navigate the challenges of this year with perspective.
As I am writing this episode, it is January 20, 2025, right after the Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles, and I want to explore the purpose of destruction in life.
If you watched the videos of the fires, the word that was used to describe the scenes of the fires was “apocalyptic”.
Think of this fire as a metaphor.
On the world’s stage, destruction takes many forms, from the 2020 Covid-19 outbreak to fires around the world, hurricanes, tornadoes in the Midwest, etc.
On a personal level, it could be losing a home, losing a job or some kind of financial loss, divorce or loss of a relationship, sickness, or death. When they happen, they leave people wondering, what is the purpose of the loss or destruction?
The Hidden Wisdom in Loss and Destruction
To help you find what is meaningful in your life
Sometimes the purpose of something being destroyed is to really help you find what is meaningful in your life. Society has taught you to accumulate things.
That’s why companies refer to people as consumers. But as you saw from the LA fires, when things are going up in flames, if you are lucky, you have a small window to take what is really important, like documents, a few pictures, and just a few essentials.
The same thing happens during hurricanes: people take essentials and their animals, and then they leave and go to someplace safe. At the end of the day, this is what is really meaningful to that person.
To help you find Community
Sometimes the purpose of loss or destruction is to help you find community.
Tragedies bring people together to realize that they are one group of humanity and not the artificial separation that’s been created by the media and institutions.
People from all walks of life come together in support of their neighbor or somebody they did not even know simply because that person is human.
To expose secrets
Sometimes tragedies expose secrets in families, and if you’re a sensitive soul who came from a dysfunctional family, tragedies or loss really reveal the true picture of dysfunction that’s being hidden in families.
Somebody once said that God has been listening to what is being said in some of those rooms and has decided that it’s time for you to know the truth. And the truth doesn’t come out when it’s sunshine and rainbows. The truth comes out when something is at stake.
For example, when family is fighting over money, property, and all kinds of material things, that’s when you hear things that have been bottled up, things that you didn’t know your family members were thinking about you, and that becomes the purpose of the tragedy or the loss — to reveal hidden agendas, feelings, secrets, and the truth.
As you know, the truth is painful. The truth is inconvenient. The truth is complex. The truth is ugly. The truth is expensive.
To reveal your inner strength
And sometimes the only purpose of the tragedy is to reveal that the only real person you can really depend on is yourself.
The tragedy is there to help you find your own inner strength and to help you really see people for who they are.
Your soul is always calling you towards wholeness. Wholeness requires that things that are under the surface be examined. And the natural cycles of life will bring events for this purpose. The old has to fall away to create space for something new.
To offer an opportunity for a fresh start
Sometimes the purpose of a tragedy is to completely break down something that’s not working and then rebuild a new foundation from the ground up.
But the purpose of a tragedy cannot be revealed on a mass level. It is very particular to individuals. It’s like an algorithm tailored to an individual to find their own lesson in the tragedy.
Find the Meaning of Loss in Your Life: From Breakdowns to Breakthroughs
In 20 years, the Pacific Palisades will not be like anybody imagined. There will be a group of architects and scientists who will sit down and design new modern homes with newer technology that is fire resistant.
They will come up with all kinds of technologies to identify and mitigate fires quicker, and they will create something very unique that would otherwise not have been created unless there was apocalyptic destruction.
It’s the same thing with your life. You are the architect of your life.
And if you look at your life, you have an opportunity to design something that in 20 years, you will look back and say:
“You know what? That tragedy really brought me the clarity that I needed in my life. The clarity of what was important. The old things didn’t make much sense anymore. They made sense then. But not anymore.”
Tragedies and loss create space in our lives so that we can examine what really matters to us so that we can create a new template so we can architect and design new ways of living that are more sustainable to what we want to see in the future.
And sometimes you don’t know what you want or what is meaningful in your life until tragedy strikes.
In the moment of a tragedy, it is really difficult to have perspective, and that is very normal. You can’t have perspective when your energy is in survival mode.
It’s only after the proverbial fire has stopped, maybe some rain has fallen onto the ashes, some grass starts to grow, and a new normal has started to set in that you can have perspective.
What Did You Learn from Being in a Toxic Relationship?
Toxic relationships inevitably bring the dysfunction inherent in them to the surface and give you an opportunity to ask yourself.
- Who am I?
- What are my values?
- Is this who I want to be in life?
- Is this who I want to be with in life?
- What is important to me?
- What do I really want to do in my life?
- What can I do to make a difference in my life and society?
What is the Takeaway?
When it comes down to it, the only real things you have in life are:
- Your relationship with yourself
- Your relationships with other people
- Your relationships with animals and the planet
- Your lived and learned experiences.
And if this premise is true for you, then it follows that you have to focus on what is important in life and live your life on purpose.
- As a sensitive person with high conscientiousness, what does living life on purpose mean to you?
- For starters, that would be changing your relationship with things. That could mean that you stop buying things you don’t need and prioritize experiences over things.
- Prioritize yourself.
- What does that look like for you?
- Prioritize cultivating healthy relationships with others.
- What do healthy relationships look like?
- Find out what your role is with animals and with the planet and find ways to make a difference.
As we end this episode, be empowered to find the meaning in the events, tragedies or loss, whatever that looks like for you.
The bottom line is that losses, endings, and destructions are a catalyst for change and growth in your personal life and society as a whole.
Its true purpose lies in its power to reshape you, revealing strength and wisdom you might not have discovered otherwise.
Endings and losses challenge you to let go of outdated beliefs, toxic relationships, and limiting self-identities, ultimately guiding you toward greater alignment with your authentic self.
As you move through the year, I invite you to learn to embrace the impermanence of life and build resilience.
I also invite you to challenge yourself, perhaps see destruction as an opportunity for reinvention rather than a curse. Instead of fearing it, choose to see it as a doorway to new possibilities and watch how your life changes.