Good & Bad Ways Of Feeling Suffering & Pain
Pain and suffering affects the human experience in both good and bad ways. What is pain and suffering? Where do they come from? Are they the same or different? It might be easy to answer these questions, but if you think about it, it is hard to explain “suffering” without the word “pain,” and vise versa. Pain is often described as what we feel when we get hurt, physically or emotionally.
As for the dictionary says about pain, “Physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury.”Life is filled with uncertainty, and living in this world does not come with an instruction or a manual. One day we’re filled with happiness, and next thing you know, we’re crying at a corner, overwhelmed and confused about a situation that is not familiar to us, or a situation that simply hurts us. Along with these challenges is something that is inevitable-- pain. It is something that we all feel in our lifetime. Pain can come in an instant, like a sudden death of someone close to us (emotional), or getting hurt from an accident (physical); But it can also be chronic, where it slowly creeps in our system, and as we ignore it longer, it just keeps building up and slowly affect us, and how we live our everyday lives.
Feeling pain and suffering are one of the many obstacles that life throws at us. Experiencing these challenges plays a significant role to who we are today. Having a painful experience reminds us that no matter how well off we are, no matter how educated we are, we are still humans. No one is really immune to pain. Life comes with pain; It’s like when a mother gives birth to her child, she has to endure the painful process of giving birth in order to bring another life to the world. However, we must not take pain as something bad. Infact, pain helps us to get through life. Letting it break through us allows us to learn how to build ourselves back up. Instead of running away from these obstacles, allow yourself to learn how to strive to get out of the painful situation.
Allowing yourself to feel the pain is different from letting it consume you. This is suffering. Suffering is enigma; It can be crying a lot, for some, but it can also be smiling despite all the overwhelming feelings inside. There are people who still believes that suffering is a choice. However, this is not true for everyone. Just like pain, suffering can also be inevitable for a number of people, especially those with a chemical imbalance in their brains. Where does suffering come from? It’s easy to describe it with the words, “pain that lasts for a long time.” However, suffering can also be described in many ways. The feeling of unsteadiness, the heavy weight of the world on top your shoulders, and every time you ignore it, the more you get tired as you take a step in your life. Or maybe, the feeling of hopelessness in our lives that makes us lose interest in everything, even the things we used to love. These feelings shouldn’t be ignored. We might not be able to see, or feel it at first, but it slowly impacts us and how we live our daily lives.
A person suffering may seem like they’re sad, irritable, and pushing everyone out of their lives, but at the same time, a person suffering may also seem like they’re living a normal, happy life. Sometimes, it’s hard to determine if the person is suffering for we all cope with obstacles differently. However, it is also great to feel suffering at least once in our lifetime. It allows us to use it as an opportunity to give out our best and learn to never let these circumstances block our way. It allows us to learn and become stronger so that if we face a similar, or harder problem in our life, we can apply our past obstacles to the new one and have courage to get through it.
Facing challenges in our lives, whether it’s big or small, it will always have a lesson for us to learn from. We just have to look for solutions, rather than focusing on the pain itself.Imagine being in a room filled with small lego pieces, scattered on the floor, and you have to get to the other side, where the washroom is. The lego, and the call of nature represents your obstacles. The longer you wait, the harder it will be for you. The pain in your bladder would grow, and so you take a step on the floor, where the legos are. At first, it would hurt. However, the more you keep going, the more your feet would get used to the feeling, and at the same time, you are getting out of the tough situation. Just like our obstacles in real life; You just have to keep going, and remind yourself that there’s an end to every problem, you just have to look for it, or solve it. One must remember that there’s always a reason to why things happen.
Pain and suffering in life may seem difficult, but it always has an impact towards the individual who’s being challenged, whether it may be a good or bad impact. However, the outcome depends on how the person handles the situation. When faced with an obstacle, it is up to us whether we’d face it with courage and get through it, or keep on running away from it and let the problem grow bigger compared to how it started. It is okay to feel stuck, or to stop for a moment. It’s okay to cry it all out. We’re humans. We’re allowed to express our feelings out, whether it be alone, or with other people.
Hence, sooner or later, we would have enough strength to build our walls back up again. Pain is inevitable, but suffering can sometimes be a choice. However, they do have a similarity: they’re both hard to deal with, but yes, they’re both temporary. Suffering is the door to our reality; Being able to feel the pain reminds us that we’re alive. It helps us to build ourselves to become stronger, and helps us to realize that there’s more to life than the feeling of hopelessness and suffering. After all the storms, we’d be able to prevent ourselves from getting into the same situation again, and realize that there is something else that is beyond great that lies around the corner. Without having to feel pain and suffering, we would not be able to distinguish what happiness and sadness is; Our life would become dull without these feelings.
