z: Suffering...it's GOOD for you!

  Hmmm, I guess if that argument didn’t work for the broccoli on your plate when you were a kid, it’s probably not going to work with the suffering in your life right now. But, believe it or not, I’m going to suggest that there actually is a place for suffering in your life.  

Here’s my theory:

You know how I said that the crazy, chaotic, seemingly futile activity that you experienced when you first started meditating was actually part of the process of developing a practice of meditation?

And then I said that the shaky, awkward, stiffness that you felt in your body when you first started ‘sitting upright’ was part of developing the posture that allowed you to breathe so fully and naturally that you could begin to relax into your meditation?

I think that the sadness, frustration, loneliness, anger, hurt, desperation, (insert your least pleasant emotion here) that you feel, the suffering that you experience, is actually part of the process of developing the emotional persistence or tolerance that supports you to experience life as it is.

Here’s my analogy:

When a two year old is learning to walk, he falls, a lot. Sometimes he cries, but mostly, he just gets up and tries again. When he falls, we don’t say “Oh no you fell! You better stop walking because with all this falling you’re going to hurt yourself!” We see him fall and we know that falling is part of learning to walk. We might give him a table to lean on or offer him our hand. But we would never see the falling as a failure and we’d know that if we prevented him from falling or came up with some way for him to not fall, we’d be depriving him of the opportunity to learn to walk.

Falling is to learning to walk as suffering is to learning to actually live this life, as it is, all of it.

And here’s my personal experience:

I was sad. Impermanence sucked. So did the fact that just when I thought I had the whole intimacy thing figured out, this other thing came along and blew it out of the water! It didn’t matter how present I was, it didn’t matter how much I shared with others, it didn’t matter how many connections I made, people could leave, at any time, and me and all my intimacy expertise (ha!) couldn’t do a thing to change that. I was still alone.

I was ready to throw in the towel, give up on being present, run back into my room and hang out where it was safe, where no one could leave me. I was hurt, angry, and sad. I tried to find fault with who left me so it wouldn’t hurt so much when they left, and I wanted to withdraw so that I could leave them instead of them leaving me. And then I felt like a failure for feeling all of that! It was like I had just fallen off the road to happiness by experiencing all of this suffering.

But then I talked to a “good friend.” (I highly recommend talking to a good friend- check with your insurance provider to see if good friends are covered in your plan, they’re worth every penny of your deductible.) My good friend pointed out that I was feeling. I wasn’t running back into my room, I wasn’t denying my hurt or anger, I was actually feeling it. The hurt, sadness, anger was the same as the joy, elation, and dancing around in my kitchen I had done when I was feeling all “master-of-intimacy” earlier this summer. They’re all feelings and they’re what we humans do when we live. Suffering is just as much a part of the road to happiness as being happy is.

So I think that the sadness, the crying, the anger, the ugliness, it’s like the first few months of meditation. It can feel totally miserable and useless and frustrating but I think (though I can’t say because I’m just beginning it) that it’s part of the process of being alive. And by experiencing it, instead of judging or avoiding it, you start to live, and in the end, that can bring you happiness.

And the good news is, if suffering is good for you, then all of us who are experiencing sadness are totally buffed up and ready for the event while all you happy people are just skinny malinks who drop out as soon as it gets tough (okay, not really, but it's nice to think that experiencing suffering is a way to get in shape).