Many years ago, an astute friend shared an observation with me. She said, "You know, everyone has their One Thing, that part of their life they can never seem to get right, that they always struggle with. For my husband and me, it's money. For you, it's love. It's just how these things go. Everyone has their One Thing."
True. So true.
I later came to a fuller understanding of this concept through exploring the idea of reincarnation. My view of the Life of the Soul has evolved into the following set of thoughts:
The Creator, Source, the All That Is, the consciousness that underlies and gives birth to all of the physical laws and processes that govern our existence, wishes to learn and grow, to add to its own self-knowledge.
In its desire to grow and learn more about itself, it splits off a very small part of itself to become separate and self-aware.
This new, self-aware "chip off the old block" is a Soul.
This Soul's goal is to experience all of the Created Things, eventually amassing enough knowledge and experience to return to Source and inform the process of Creating new Things.
In order to complete this journey, multiple experiences as an incarnated being are necessary, for one can only work on so many pieces of knowledge at one time. For example, it may take several lifetimes to work on the concept of Pride, for example, or Greed, Love, Compassion, or any other concept worth mastering. I call this process being in "Earth School".
In the lifetime you are experiencing right now, you are working primarily on one concept, one "Earth School" class. Naturally, then, there will be one area of your life you can never seem to "get right". This is the one you're learning about!
I love soccer, and for a while I played on a team that always won. Every game. And I hated it. To me, winning is great. It teaches you what to keep doing. But my goal is to learn to be better at the game, and to do that, losing sometimes is necessary, because it teaches what to NOT do. A well-rounded player knows both what to do and what to NOT do.
Life is the same. If we're not getting things wrong sometimes, we're not really learning to play the game well. Suffering in order to learn and grow as a soul (what I call Suffering with a Purpose) is normal, natural, and good. If you're going through hell right now, pat yourself on the back for having the courage to throw yourself into your One Thing with such enthusiasm, and keep going. You can do it!