The Art of Suffering — Gracefully!
I have been wondering for a while that I have been on this planet for 33 years and I can say with some confidence that Buddha was right — “All existence is suffering”. You the reader or I the writer cannot escape suffering. If it is the most inevitable reality of our lives, how poorly prepared are we in terms of the art of suffering gracefully?
We suffer and suffer terribly. There is no grace to it. I mean I do not remember a sane discussion with another member in my family who prepared me for a life full of sufferings. There is not a single teacher I remember who ever taught us how to suffer gracefully. I do not remember a friend with whom I had a discussion that would realistically accept suffering as a part of life and then look for ways to go through suffering gracefully.
This blog is not a negative blog. It is not a blog that is pessimistic or is nihilistic in nature. The aim of the blog is to build acceptance and not denial. The aim of the blog is to find meaning and purpose in suffering. The aim of the blog is to look forward to suffering as a mode of self discovery.
Moving on.. We suffer when we are stuck in traffic for long hours. We suffer when we manage finances poorly and then look for ways to recover and fail. We suffer when we indulge in gluttony and then look for expensive ways to find our way back to health. We while away our youth and energy and focus on pleasures of the flesh and later repent the loss of opportunities and struggle to find a place on this earth. We struggle and suffer to find love and suffer from expectations when in love. We suffer when we do not get what we want and also when we get what we did not want. We suffer when we lose loved ones and suffer when the loved ones hurt us. We suffer when we fail to succeed and also when no one is there to celebrate your success.
We are all scared of failure and the resulting pain of failure. We suffer when we fail. We suffer in anticipation of failure. We suffer the consequences of failure even before the failure has hit us. We suffer from the fear of ridicule. We suffer from the fear of disconnection from our family friends and society. We suffer from the fear of being misunderstood and the fear of being forgotten while being alive. We fear being perceived as uncool. We fear being left behind in the race. We fear being judged. We fear being labelled as dumb, loser and what not. We fear not being worthy of love or belonging. We fear being hurt. We fear we may have to suffer. We may have to suffer because of a zillion known unknown reasons but we may have to suffer.
Let us take the may out of it. We suffer and we shall continue to suffer for reasons known unknown. However this addiction to control the daily outcomes such that suffering does not reach or touch you is the real suffering. We suffer every moment trying to avoid suffering. If only we had the courage to suffer bravely we would probably see some sense in suffering. However I absolutely see no sense in predicting and controlling results that may prevent suffering. This is like a surcharge that you may have to pay on top of paying the tax of suffering. Why pay the surcharge when the tax itself is the real payment.
All through my childhood, I was brought up with a delusional excuse that drove me from one task to another. I grew up listening to my parents telling me that “complete your schooling and life is smooth” followed by “complete your graduation and life is smooth”, and then followed by “once you get a job the life is smooth”, and then by the legendary statement “get married and then you see life getting smoother each passing day”. Nothing. Absolutely nothing external can ever get your life to be free from suffering. One of the greatest failures of the education system is not preparing us with the right mindset to face the realities. NO. Getting a job or PHD does not solve problems [for ever]. They are just stepping stones to more challenging problems in life.
I wish I could revisit moments in my past and change my attitude towards the problems generating suffering in me. Be it health or professional issues at work or personal. I wish I knew how to suffer deeply. I would only try to find a way to convince myself to be a victim and try and find an external activity to soothe my pain and suffering. No amount of external activity soothed me but these distractions successfully suppressed most of my suffering and shifted my focus on something else temporarily until pain hit me harder each time. I responded with more and more confusion not knowing why I would fail every time in-spite of being innocent and the external systems being corrupt and flawed. The world just did not function well enough to support my expectations. I was terribly disappointed and felt suffering is only because the world is just not perfect enough. Terrible people doing half hearted work or participating in half hearted relationships resulting in my suffering. If only others could be a bit more sincere and heart whole.
If you have not got the drift yet.. Well I suffered due to my delusions and nothing else. My attitude towards my relationships and work and personal life and my health were the sore cause of my suffering and the fact that I was so sure not to expect any hurdles at work or personal life or health was so naive and immature of me. I expected everything to work in my favor unconditionally because that is how I built my expectations. The “Thusness” of life completely shook me beyond measure. I just could not accept the “Thusness” in any aspect of my life. I could not accept my parent’s behaviors in some respects, I could not understand my sister’s ambitions, I could not understand my partners motivations. Everything seemed like a massive puzzle which just did not fit in according to my dream world which was built up over a span of last 30 years. I was just unfit to suffer. I feel so terrible of those days when I just could not suffer. Suffering was unbearable not because of the differences but because of lack of acceptance and tremendous resistance. I would try a zillion things to bring things back in control and I would suffer even more terribly when things failed even more miserably. The vicious circle of Resist — Control — Fail was too much to handle for me.
Your greatest support in the process is your approach or attitude towards suffering.Your suffering is what your life has to offer as a unique challenge in front of you. You are who you are as to what you do with your suffering. You are nothing if you have nothing to respond to your suffering. You are not the victim, The life is not playing a dirty joke on you and yes the suffering is not unfair. Your suffering is your greatest opportunity today to redeem yourself and rise above the ordinary and respond to life in a way no one else can. You see the world most uniquely and your solutions are brilliantly unique. Your choice to accept suffering as a part of your transformation journey. You are the caterpillar struggling to evolve into a butterfly and as long as you resist suffering you are not exposing yourself to your best self and main remain and die a caterpillar.
Struggle and suffering are not options but biological necessities in human life. Consider the following two words 1. Attachment 2.Resistance. Our Attachment and Resistance are the two roadblocks to accepting thusness of our lives. We attach ourselves to our personalities, our jobs, our material objects and snatch them from an individual and he feels incomplete, which is unfortunate. We resist change in every way possible with every ounce of energy left. Remember the school days when the syllabus got changed or exam pattern got changed — remember the resistance you had in you. You felt terribly unfair on the part of the school or institution to change it with your batch. They should have changed it with the seniors or with the juniors. We lack the ability to accept “Thusness” of life.
Finally, The art of suffering gracefully involves two things. Drop the resistance and the attachment and see the difference it brings into your life. Be the caterpillar who is not scared of letting go of its current shape and does not resist what nature transpires to make out of it. It does not resist wings neither does it stay attached to it multiple legs. It just learns to “trust the process” go through the suffering. Endure it gracefully and evolve into something that surprises it the most.
For most of us this blog means nothing. It is just another blog, another intellectual attempt to find meaning and purpose. Another philosophical discussion with very little practical muse to it.
Hey listen, if the previous paragraph is true, you just heard your resistance speaking to you through you. Understand the implications of resisting and judging and learn to let go. We may not be able to eradicate suffering, neither can we control it through external means. The only true salvation is to endure your suffering and allow it to teach you something that only you can understand.
Allow suffering to gracefully enter your system. Study the suffering, study the human nature and its multiple dimensions as it endures suffering. Derive wisdom out of your suffering so that you may be able to help others suffer better. Get rid of definitions of success and failure. If a Caterpillar went through the education system it would judge itself once it transformed and probably find itself unfit in many regards. Education should not bind you to chains of definition, it should set you free from definitions. Your existence and your life is beyond definition. Your struggle and suffering is unique and hence do not let other’s judgement affect your transformation. Whatever you turn out to be after the suffering is who you ought to be so that you may be ready for the next challenge and suffering. If you compare your outcome to others, you will not be ready for your challenges as your challenge and suffering is different from others. Stop asking what you expect from life, for once ask what life expects out of you. Suffering is what life expects out of you. The real you. Stand up. Face the suffering, answer the question life posed to you so that you may transform into something even more beautiful and undefinable but only through non resistance and non attachment.
May we all endure our share of sufferings in the most sincerest of ways. May our lives be the answer to our sufferings. May we evolve as answers to what life questions us and find meaning in our suffering.
