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Transforming a Curse into a Blessing

The first thing you must realize is that your biggest problems can actually be your greatest blessings. The sooner you understand and embrace that truth, the sooner you will gain strength to overcome your challenges.

In his book The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck uses the Greek myth of Orestes and the Furies to demonstrate how some of our greatest struggles can become some of our greatest blessings.

Orestes was the grandson of Atreus, a man who had viciously attempted to prove himself more powerful than the gods. Because of his crime against them, the gods punished Atreus by placing a curse upon all his descendants. As part of the enactment of this curse upon the House of Atreus, Orestes’ mother, Clytemnestra, murdered his father and her husband, Agamemnon. This crime in turn brought down the curse upon Orestes’ head, because by the Greek code of honor a son was obliged, above all else, to slay his father’s murderer. Yet the greatest sin a Greek could commit was the sin of matricide. Orestes agonized over his dilemma. Finally, he did what he seemingly had to do and killed his mother. For this sin the gods then punished Orestes by visiting upon him the Furies, three ghastly harpies who could be seen and heard only by him and who tormented him night and day with their cackling criticism and frightening appearance.

Pursued wherever he went by the Furies, Orestes wandered about the land seeking to atone for his crime. After many years of lonely reflection and self-abrogation Orestes requested the gods to relieve him of the curse on the House of Atreus and its visitations upon him through the Furies, stating his belief that he had succeeded in atoning for the murder of his mother.

A trial was held by the gods. Speaking in Orestes’ defense, Apollo argued that he had engineered the whole situation that had placed Orestes in the position in which he had no choice but to kill his mother, and therefore Orestes really could not be held responsible. At this point Orestes jumped up and contradicted his own defender, stating, “It was I, not Apollo, that murdered my mother!” The gods were amazed. Never before had a member of the House of Atreus assumed such total responsibility for himself and not blamed the gods. Eventually the gods decided the trial in Orestes’ favor, and not only relieved him of the curse upon the House of Atreus but also transformed the Furies into the Eumenides, loving spirits who through their wise counsel enabled Orestes to obtain continuing good fortune.¹

Consider this: Because Orestes was willing to accept responsibility for his lot, his former curse became his greatest blessing! Everything given to us in life can be either a blessing or a curse. It is the strength of one’s heart that determines which it is.

If you feel like your life is hell—great! Because within your unique situation is the power for you to transform your life. Seen from the right perspective, the opposition you face can actually make you stronger and wiser.

Touching on this topic, C. S. Lewis wrote:

That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.… What seemed, when they entered it, to be the vale of misery turns out, when they look back, to have been a well; and where present experience saw only salt deserts, memory truthfully records that the pools were full of water.²

You can turn a curse into a blessing, a prison into a palace, and hell into heaven. But how?