Small . . . No Wait . . . Big Ideas
The above artwork is by Anna Morosini.
© All rights reserved by Anna Morosini
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Small . . . No Wait . . . Big Ideas
~ by OneMoreOption
I came across this quote, this concept, recently: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” ~ Haruki Murakami
When I read it, it made me angry, because I don’t believe the concept is healthy or helpful for most people who have experienced significant pain or are dealing with pain.
If you’ve suffered pain, or are suffering pain, whether it be mental or physical, you should not feel guilty or dysfunctional if you have suffered or are suffering.
If you’re a soldier returning from combat, and you’re still suffering from the mental and mortal threats to your person, I don’t think it would be healthy for you to feel you are doing something wrong when you recognize you are still suffering. If you’re experiencing PTSD or related problems as a result of the pains or exposure to potential pains, I think there are few good counselors who would suggest to you “Your suffering is optional.”
“Pain” and “suffer” are often synonymous verbs.
In most cases, I don’t think a person’s suffering will be reduced by suggesting to them they should not be suffering from the pain they’ve experienced. Suffering is a normal part of working through acknowledging the significance and depth of pains or losses you have experienced. Suffering can be repeatedly cathartic long after the “pain event” occurred. Recalling pain is a primary way most creatures learn and moderate their actions.
Much of the world’s great art is about acknowledging suffering. Whether it’s song like The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” or a book like “To Kill A Mockingbird” – both of those artworks center on giving visibility and voice to the realities of suffering. Neither of those artworks would have universal weight if they did not focus on the commonality and prevalence of suffering. Look at Adele’s two biggest hits: “Rolling In The Deep” and “Someone Like You” – songs addressing suffering.
I might be more concerned about a person who, after experiencing a significant loss, did not sing the blues. I don’t think denial is healthier than acknowledging suffering.
It is not an overstatement when I say: Stubborn adherence to only one bad idea can sometimes be enough to ruin a life.
Ideas and subtle distinctions are so important. Sometimes, really smart and educated people trip up major parts of their lives because they do not consider other options to their core principles.
For example, if you buy into the concept that you are “sinful” or have “a depraved nature,” as many Christians might suggest, that assumption can skew all your dependent actions and perceptions thereafter.
Seemingly small, core ideas can have huge, enduring effects. There are some people who are uneducated or not very intelligent, and don’t know any better. There are some people who may be crazy, and no longer have the capacity to know better. But most frustrating to me – There are some people who appear to simply be stubborn and refuse to consider the veracity of their old ideas, or who refuse to fully vet alternative ideas. Unfortunately, it’s often not easy to identify the sources of dysfunctional reasoning processes.
You’re suffering, to varying degrees, may never end or go away – and that’s normal, healthy, and okay.
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Hello there…I wanted to remark just a bit about the difference between pain and suffering. Pain is a physical or emotional experience. It is very uncomfortable. It is hard to endure. However, pain generally passes almost immediately. Suffering is different. It happens when we continue to experience pain. Often times, we continue to experience pain simply because we cannot allow ourselves to let something go. We assign meaning, blame, importance, ownership, investment…And we hold on…if only to how much pain we’re in. For instance, I lost a very important relationship. I felt great pain about it. I suffered only because I believed that I wouldn’t love like that again and because I had invested a bit of my identity with that person. When I understood that I could love even more deeply and happily, I could let it go. When I understood my worth absent of anyone else, I could let go. The thing is? I could have let go before I became convinced there was a tomorrow simply by choosing to understand myself better, simply because I could have chosen not to linger in my pain. I could have accepted sooner and experienced pain more briefly. It does not lessen my loving or minimize it because I let it go. This is the reason for that quote…Becoming more self aware actually does give anyone a choice about suffering with pain or simply experiencing it. It is actually a flavor of loving and life…of the intensity of loving and living with open heart and mind. Pain is a part of the love. We may be afraid of it or resist this, but it is true. We can never love without feeling also the pain of loss of that love. Through death, misunderstanding or simply choices we will loose everyone we love sooner or later. The simple acceptance of this is the same as accepting one’s death and right there, suffering almost disappears from the landscape of your life. Embracing pain as natural and befriending it, relieves the suffering of fear and resistance when pain comes. That is what the quote intends to remind us of. Just some thoughts… Hope that helps a little bit.
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Mark: I hear you. And you are well spoken. I’m not sure I agree with some of your assertions, such as: “pain is a part of the love” or “embracing pain as natural and befriending it, relieves the suffering of fear and resistance when pain comes.” There are pains about which love has no part. And there are pains I don’t think anyone need befriend or accept.
Please don’t misread me. Your ideas are excellent and worth equal consideration, adding great worth to this discussion.
Thank you.
Mark, I think I understand what kind of pains you speak of…in terms of some things being unacceptable and horrific. I was raped you see. I have been abandoned by a parent at a young age. I’ve had men I love choose another over me. I’ve lost a soul mate more than once. Pain is something I understand intimately, regularly and repetitively in my life. Even the horrific moments of rape can be looked at from this perspective. Do I give more moments of my life allowing horror to color it all, or do I choose to be happy? Do I allow myself to befriend my pain and like a good friend, make myself go out into the sunlight of my life so I’ll feel better? Yes.. Yes. and Yes! I can choose to garner beauty out of even the ugliest things in my life…or I can choose to sit with the shit it left behind…All I need do is think of it as compost and make some flowers grow. That is a choice. It is always a choice to either think about the shit or grow some flowers. No one can make that choice for me…nor for you. We are the only ones who can make compost out of shit in our lives and the only ones who can choose to grow flowers. If we won’t do it, who will? It is not easy. It is not right that we have shit or that we know horror. But we are in it…and we must befriend ourselves and the lessons that arise in us as a result of hurt. That is how we heal. Even if we don’t like this fact of life…It is still how healing works. That is the reason that suffering is optional. It doesn’t mean pain doesn’t hurt…it just means suffering springs from our own belief that we must live with the shit…always…or at least until someone or some thing comes up with a magic wand and frees us. Life generally doesn’t work that way. It is rare that a miracle wipes away pain as if it never happened. Mostly? We have to do it ourselves…and that requires skillful means as your next commenter suggests. With deep, deep respect, I would suggest that your anger springs from needing to let go of a viewpoint that is holding you hostage…I hope you’ll meditate on this and the words of my fellow Buddhist who commented below and just let the potential of the idea simmer in you awhile…measure it against what could be should you choose to adopt this new ideal on the off chance it actually is true…
I hear you. As with all debates and distinctions, word choices are central.
Maybe no simple sentence can express any significant rule with sufficient complexities and exceptons.
My concern, with the original question of “Is suffering optional?” is that if we suggest suffering is discretionary (an optional choice on the part of a person who has experienced pain), then we may be lying to ourselves and others – or we may be placing an unrealistic standard on those who are going through stages of grief and stages of recovery, following a painful event.
You and I agree about moving toward flowers and trying to make flowers from the shit we sometimes are given.
Where we may disagree is in answering this question: In order to better “move on,” will a person be better off to consider or take a leap of faith that suffering may only be an elective choice?
I believe suffering, defined as an authentic revisiting or re-recognizing of actions and consequences, surrounding painful events – can be a healthy source of wisdom, that forever thereafter informs or gives value to our subsequent actions.
I’m not a person who believes people are necessarily made better by taking conceptual leaps of faith to believe “they have been forgiven of all past sins,” “their pains have been washed away,” “their past is forgotten,” or “they will experience no more suffering” – common enticing Christian promises of receiving something of great emotional value in exchange for accepting an line of thinking or code of philosophy.
I don’t hope for a cognitive result where someone or some entity has “forgiven and forgotten.” I believe it is through remembering and not forgetting, something that is sometimes called “suffering,” that we have relavant and weighted reference posts.
It may or may not be a choice to revisit painful realities and memories. For some people, we don’t choose to return to the environment that surrounded us in shit, but we also don’t find value in trying to forget it.
I am not a masochist, nor do I promote maschism. But maybe a more artful way to express my thoughts is to refer to a classic quote:
“Remember, the shadows are as important as the light.”
~ from “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte.
Sometimes, there is value in re-watching the tragedies, not just the comedies. If choosing to suffer is an option, it may still, in many ways, be a healthy one.
Suffering may not simply be an option, it may not simply be a discretionary choice that people who have experienced pain can opt out of – “if only they try hard and put their mind to it.”
A woman recently commented angrily on a post I wrote several years ago about a memoir by a young woman who suffered from anorexia. The commenter, correctly or incorrectly, interpreted the author was asserting anorexia can be overcome by simply choosing to eat again. The commenter’s belief was the forces that caused her long standing anorexia were beyond her cognitive discretion (following her rape).
She wrote: THE ABOVE REVIEW QUOTED LUCY: “No one can force you to do anything. You choose. You always choose . . . you can choose to begin that furtive stumble towards the light.” p. 194.
This makes it sound like people CHOOSE to have anorexia…. I know I certainly never CHOSE this path and 25 years ago when I was first diagnosed (aged 13) I had never even heard of anorexia….. If Lucy uses those DESTRUCTIVE PRO-ANA websites then maybe she does think it is a “lifestyle choice”… but personally I think this is a BAD MESSAGE because it makes people who don’t understand the illness think you are choosing to be sick and can just choose to “get over it”.
I have never suffered from anorexia, or many other cognitive, addictive mental ailments, and I am not qualified to tell you which woman was “more accurate” in their assertions on those topics.
It is valuable for people to consider one more option. In this discussion, considering the idea that suffering is optional is one more option to many of the assertions I have made.
Thank you for sharing your valuable thoughts.
You have a pointy point point.
I do think there is a distinction to be made between pain and suffering.
I think that ‘suffering’ here relates to the Buddhist concept of ‘dukkha’ which is the mental anguish we put ourselves through as a natural response to the bad things that happen to us.
I also think that in some cases it is possible to work through this suffering with what the Buddha refers to as ‘skilful means.
There is yet another category of suffering which can be intractable – the kind that comes in the wake of tragedy and grief and mental illness such as depression.
Something very important I learned from my dogs is the manner in which they ‘let go’ of something bad and switch over into being happy and cheerful.
This isn’t always possible for humans, but, its a good thing to keep in mind. The mental re-visiting and regurgitating we sometimes do is indeed optional.
This is a very complex issue, because sometimes the only way out of the pain is through suffering.
Not that its possible to always get through to the other side.
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Mark: You beautifully have responded, and capably countered, my thoughts, adding to the quality of the discussion.
It is interesting you use dogs as an example, because I think you, or other dog owners, may also be able to share stories of dogs who never did let go, a central part of them never forgot the weight and uniqueness of what they lost.
Thank you.
Theinkbrain…You are right…There are times when the scars of an event go to the core of being. There is nothing to do but allow the pain to wash over oneself and go through it to the other side. It is true that scars remain after some hurts. However, we can make even those scars beautiful. For instance I know a woman who had a double mastectomy. She had two beautiful tattoos placed over the scars. Her breasts are now more beautiful to me than before her surgeries. Not because of the tattoos as much as because she chose to be beautiful despite loosing the quintessential symbol of what makes her a woman. She chose to reclaim her womanhood. She chose to reclaim her life and sexuality and to make them more beautiful than before. That is what happens when we go straight through pain to the other side. That was a choice…a choice NOT to suffer, but to prosper within the context of her pain…she did not cover herself up for the rest of her life and feel ugly. That would have been suffering. She took her pain and scarring and made it beautiful and worth seeing and living with. Blessings…
These sorts of things leave me in awe of human beings, and I assure you that is not my normal attitude. Thank you for revealing this about your friend. It seems her act continues to generate beauty.