"This Too Shall Pass." Where Does The Saying Actually Come From?
"This too shall pass, this too shall pass, this too shall pass."
We’ve all heard this before.
If you've felt the sting of failure or lived through grief or heartbreak, then you know mantras aren't the cure to your agony. Words alone don’t possess that power. You can't say Je t'aime to a lover who doesn't speak French. Words remain empty unless you give them meaning.
There's wisdom in "this too shall pass," but it helps to understand why.
It has been written that Abraham Lincoln popularized the phrase during a speech at the 1859 Wisconsin State Fair — a few years before the Civil War.
The speech was supposed to be about agriculture, but he quickly pivoted its subject to hope and the farmer’s role in the grand scheme of the universe (as was his style).
‘And this, too, shall pass away,” he proclaims. “How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride!—how consoling in the depths of affliction! ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’”
Here’s the thing, Lincoln suffered from debilitating depression most of his life. Modern psychology wasn't around to treat the illness, so everyone simply called it melancholy. At 32 years old, Lincoln was so low that his friends took all the knives, guns, and rope from his house to prevent self-harm. "I'm now the most miserable man living," he once wrote to a friend.
Twenty years later, the people elected Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, and inherited the worst crisis in US history. An estimated 750,000 people died during the Civil War; entire cities burned to ash; slavery endured all the while. It's hard for us to imagine that a man once on the brink of suicide could also bear on his shoulders the entire weight of a grieving nation.
But that’s what he did.
"You are sure to be happy again." He wrote to a young woman who lost her father to the war. "I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once."
Lincoln harnessed the pain from his internal turmoil and his experience with grief to ease the burden of millions. "This too shall pass" weren't just words. They were his truth. We all need someone in our lives to remind us of the reality when emotions overwhelm our resolve.
That you will heal.
You will feel better.
It is written.
"And this too shall pass away."
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