Suffering

  

        ‘Pain and suffering are inevitable for those with a deep heart.’ Fyodor Dostoyevsky 

If we love anyone, we will suffer when they die because their death will fracture us. Many of us will think that we should be strong enough to deal with grief on our own, so we won’t tell anyone. When others are suffering, they don’t tell us for the same reason, even though we would want to help. Everyone ends up suffering in silence, alone with our thoughts and feelings that circle around and around until they spiral us down. 

 

Because grief will never completely go away, the question is how to live with grief and still celebrate the daily joy of life? 

 

Some suffering is temporary. We get a cold, or it rains for an entire week. Other suffering is the result of something we do. We get a sunburn because we didn’t apply sunblock. We drink untreated water from a mountain stream and pick up the giardia lamblia parasite that makes us loose for a few days. Some suffering is more significant and lasts longer, as when good friends move away, or we lose our job. Some of us even take on suffering to help a person who is struggling with a serious illness.

 

There is also the suffering that is the result of environmental disasters, and suffering that is deliberately caused by others. This can be a one-time event or an ongoing situation. The world continues to struggle with the systematic persecution of groups of people for no other reason than that they seem different. 

 

Our suffering can be physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. We may think that if we had done something differently, they might still be alive, but the anguish of this guilt is hard to deflect because there is no way for anyone to know if this is true, and it’s a rabbit hole to avoid. We did what we knew to do at the time because we cared about them.

 

When someone dies, a community grieves. When we share our loss with each other, we find the strength to endure and we learn the way of compassion.

 

In general, if we can identify the source of our suffering, we can soften what is generating the pain. With grief, for example, if we are feeling abandoned, we can make a point to gather with someone every couple of days, someone who knows that beneath our polite smile and responses of “I’m doing fine,” we are unsettled. They ask how we are really doing, listen, and help us clarify what we’re feeling. Being with others, even for short amounts of time, helps us step out of the spirals. 

 

If we simply can’t muster the energy to do anything, even something that we used to enjoy before our loved one died, we can do it anyway. Often the joy that it brought us in the past pushes through the leather of lethargy and gives us something exciting to look forward to.

 

‘Even if I can’t see the sun, I know it still exists.’ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

 

            When I see a black Swallowtail butterfly with blue on its wings still gliding around in the cool air of October, probably sensing that its life might soon be over, I understand the gift of every day of life. I refuse to believe that suffering is an end to anything. Where we are broken is a train station where we sit until we are ready to begin the next chapter of our life. 

 

We need to be humble enough to ask for help when we need it, and wise enough to accept help when it’s offered. When a loved one dies, we live in fragments until we reconnect with others, and we only connect by taking risks and letting ourselves be vulnerable again.

 

What helps us rise above suffering is finding something greater to live for.