Believe it or not, we do have control over our suffering.
Before I go on, yes, I am aware that in the last blog I said I would continue discussing how to suffer well. This blog, while seemingly a departure from that promise, is only a detour. We will continue on that journey most certainly soon.
Back to the subject at hand.
We do, in fact have control over our suffering. Now, I want to be very clear about what I am saying, as I understand there is a way to interpret that which is incorrect and problematic. There is certainly a factor of suffering that is out of our control. I cannot necessarily choose whether I am subject to abuse, trauma, violence, injury, etc. Some of those things happen without warning, consent, and the ability to make the external circumstances anything other than what they are. So, in that sense, we do not always have control over what is happening to us.
I also want to be sure that we establish another truth, which is more of a connotation of the title itself. There are plenty of situations in which those on the outside of a particular person’s suffering have deduced that this person “ought to just leave", whether it be a situation of abuse, domestic violence, poverty or neglect, or any other suffering. While this is often conceptually true (a person can physically leave, albeit hindered by difficulty, barriers, continued abuse, etc) I do not want to focus on that reality as much as I want to focus on the emotional aspect of leaving.
To be more precise, I want to focus on the ability of every human to depart from the aspects of their suffering which keep them there emotionally.
At this point, I have spoken much about the past and how childhood and other formative relationships set the stage for what we expect from the world and ourselves, especially in terms of the suffering we experience throughout. These are the situations which put us there, the catalysts to our experience with suffering, the game we did not willingly opt in to.
Then, as I have also described, comes our response to suffering. This includes our way of receiving it, our attitude surrounding it, and how we choose to navigate it based on what life has taught us about suffering and ourselves up to this point. It is this part of the experience we can leave, because it is this part of suffering that comes to us no matter how unchosen the rest of it is.
And it is this that I am referring to precisely that is key to understanding just how overcome suffering, as opposed to merely going through it.
So, we can just leave. Maybe we can’t stop the cause, maybe we can. But no matter what, we can separate ourselves from the suffering itself and the ways it may be perpetuating past sufferings we have endured and not allowed to become an arsenal of self-knowledge. And of course I don’t mean avoidance, or dissociation, but real, healthy separation which says “I am going to endure this and not allow my identity to absorb this experience so much that I cannot see a way out, or a reason to look for one.”
A separation which ultimately says, “I am not the situation I am in, but rather an active participant in the way this suffering shapes who I am, and the hope I have in the present and future.”
Now that you know you can, what would you like to leave in your experience of suffering?
Come back next week for more on this!