Chapter 4

Chapter Four, Honoring Our Pain for the World, reframes anguish for our world as a ‘call to adventure’ that inspires us to get started on the road of the Great Turning. Drawing parallels with the ‘hitting bottom’ of addictions recovery, it describes how the experience of distress can open up motivational energy and determination. Wanting to do something, however, is just the start. We need to build our capacity to act, and the next part of the book helps us do this through four empowering shifts in perception. We describe these as the ‘four discoveries’: a wider sense of self, a different kind of power, a richer experience of community and a larger view of time.