@tferriss I like the message your friend took away from the Cohen poem, but my interpretation is different. Seasickness happens when there is incongruity between what you expect and what actually occurs. So to "become the ocean" is not to become vast, but accepting.
I think there is something deeply attractive about finding meaning through suffering. But this is a kind of seasickness--a mismatch between the real and perceived. Sometimes there is no lesson; pain is simply pain.
That seems like a more Cohenish read to me.
Wagner’s famous Bridal Chorus, the one that goes ‘here comes the bride’ from the opera Lohengrin, was written for two characters whose marriage is immediately doomed.