• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 995 0

is that none of the subjects thought they were creating a response. If you accidentally put your hand on a hot stove, your body reacts instantly. Yet in that instant your brain is actually assessing the pain and giving it the intensity you perceive as objectively real. And by not renouncing their control over it people get lost in their pain. “What can I do? My mother just died, and I’m devastated. I can’t even get out of bed in the morning.” In such a statement there seems to be a direct link between cause (the death of a loved one) and effect (depression). But, in fact, the trail followed between cause and effect isn’t a straight line; the whole person enters the picture, with a wealth of factors from the past. It’s as if pain enters a black box before we feel it, and in that box the pain is matched up with everything we are—our whole history of emotions, memories, beliefs, and expectations. If you are self-aware, the black box isn’t so sealed off and hidden. You know that you can affect what goes on inside it. But when we suffer, we victimize ourselves. Why is the pain a 10 instead of a 1? Because it just is, that’s why. In truth, suffering persists only to the extent that we allow ourselves to remain lost in our own creation.

Comparing yourself to others: The ego wants to be number one; therefore, it has no choice but to get caught up in a never-ending game of comparing itself to others. Like all ingrained habits, this one is hard to break. A friend of mine recently learned that a woman he knew had been killed in a car crash. He did not know the woman well, but he knew all her friends. Within hours of her death a pall of grief had settled over them. The woman was beloved and had done many good works; she was young and full of optimism. For these reasons people grieved even more, and my friend was caught up in it. “I saw myself getting out of my car and being struck by a hit-and-run driver, the way she was. I kept thinking that I should do more than send flowers and a card. As it happened, I went on vacation the week of the funeral, and I actually found myself unable to enjoy myself just thinking about the shock and pain of dying that way.”

In the midst of these reactions, my friend had a sudden realization. “I was going along getting gloomier when it hit me: ‘That isn’t my life. She isn’t me.’ The thought felt very strange. I mean, isn’t it good to be compassionate? Shouldn’t I share in the grief all my friends were feeling?” At that moment he stopped comparing himself to someone else—not an easy thing to do because we all gain identity from parents, friends, and spouses. An entire community has taken up fragmentary residence inside us, composed of bits and pieces of other personalities.

Our style of suffering is learned from others. To the extent that you feel stoic or weak, in control or victimized, desperate or hopeful, you are adhering to reactions set down by someone else. Deviating from their pattern feels strange, even threatening. In my friend’s case, he broke out of a pattern of grief only when he realized that it was second-hand. Before that, he wanted to feel what was proper and expected. He wanted to fit in with the way others saw the situation. As long as you compare yourself to others, your suffering will persist as a way of fitting in.

Cementing suffering through relationships: Pain is a universal experience; therefore, it enters into every relationship. Nobody truly suffers alone, and even if you do everything you can to suffer in silence, you are having an effect on those around you. The reason that people find it so difficult to enter a healing relationship is that life in our family of origin often required a good deal of unawareness. We overlook what we don’t want to see; we keep silent about things that are too difficult to discuss; we respect boundaries even when they put someone into a box. In short, the family is where we learn to deny pain. And denied pain is just another term for suffering.

Given a choice, most people would rather preserve their relationships than stop suffering. One sees