Why Do We Suffer?
What is suffering?
Suffering seems to be an inevitable fact of life. We have highs and we have lows. We all know what it can feel like. But what exactly is it?
Suffering can be defined as resistance to the present moment.
Every day, we subconsciously make the decision to resist the present. We ruminate about the past, we overthink, we become worried about fictitious future scenarios that don’t exist.
But if we’re honest with ourselves, for the vast majority of the time, there’s no suffering right here, right now.
This even applies on a physical level. We could trip and graze our knee. Our mind resists, reacting with “that hurts!” But looking at the present moment with detached, objective observation, we could see the reality for what it is: “I feel a prickling sensation on my knee right now. It’s warm. It feels sharp at times, and then that sharpness subsides.” It’s the mind that takes this collection of individual sensations, processes them and concludes “ow, I’m suffering!”
Suffering from a devotional perspective
I don’t water my plants every day of the week. In fact, I let them go thirsty sometimes so that they grow stronger roots. If I over-nurture them, they won’t grow.
It doesn’t mean that I don’t care about them. I do this because I care about them.
I’ve heard it said that "love is the most powerful teacher. Suffering is the second most powerful teacher."
Often though, love is most keenly felt only after suffering; make dinner for your children every night and they’ll consider it routine. Give a starving beggar a scrap of bread and that show of love would change his world.
A person only truly appreciates the air when they’ve been underwater for a long time.
What can I do about my suffering right now?
- We can ask: what is life trying to teach me? Often, suffering is there to teach us love, acceptance or self-awareness. It can instil in us a wisdom that no other human being could possibly just say to us.
Instead of being open to the lessons that suffering teaches us, however, we wish it wasn’t there. We choose to take the perspective that our suffering is a curse. We resist suffering. Of course, this only leads to more of it. - Meditate. We can train our minds to accept the present moment as it is, rather than resist it. We can’t change the world, but we can change how we react to it. Meditation is one practice that can lead to spiritual enlightenment: here, there is no suffering. There is just a radical acceptance towards all things.
- We can learn to take life less personally. While it’s tempting to think that our suffering is because of a specific person or event, life has a way of throwing the same lesson at us again and again, through different people, situations and circumstances, until we learn it. Our suffering should never be seen as ‘us against the person’. It’s always ‘us against the situation’. But even "against" implies some sort of battle - suffering does not have to be a battle. Suffering is a powerful opportunity to learn and develop ourselves as human beings. It’s a gift.
- We can be grateful. If we have a roof over our head at night, then we have a reason to be grateful. Yes, we create our own hells. But we have the power to create our own heavens, too.
- And finally, remember: it’s okay not to feel okay.
