What if Suffering is More of an Honest Thing than a Bad Thing?

You keep using that word. Maybe it doesn’t mean what you think it means.

Photo by Rafay Ansari on Unsplash

In our fear-based society, probably the thing we fear the most is suffering.

Realistically, more often than not, the fear of suffering is far worse than any suffering is or will be.

Allow me to prove this to you. Have you ever had a boss or a loved one say, “We need to talk,” with no context? Did you then start to become concerned about what the nature of the conversation might be, if you were about to get bad news or told something awful? Then, did you start to build it up to be this horrible thing in your head that you were certain would be the cause of tremendous pain, discomfort, and suffering?

If it was not a bad thing, then all that fear of suffering was for naught. But if it was a bad thing — more likely than not, it wasn’t nearly as unpleasant, painful, or the cause of the amount of suffering you feared it would be.

We build up suffering to be the worst. It doesn’t matter if suffering will be literal or figurative, physical or mental/emotional/spiritual, or some bizarre combination therein. People go to great lengths to avoid the possibility of suffering — sometimes even against better judgment, logic, reason…