Dear Editor,
Does denying the fact of one’s suffering help? The negation of hardship is itself the denial of life, as suffering and its myriad of forms is one of the impersonal and neutral possibilities of human existence. During the course of our lives we build towering dykes to protect and surround ourselves from the all too present chaos; but everything including our marriages, bank accounts, friends, families, health, etc. could be ripped away from us. None of us is entitled to anything.
Adversity and hardship are not inherently bad or good, they do not possess an innate purpose; rather it’s our thinking that makes them so. Suffering doesn’t have the power to harm us unless we give our consent to, as X and Y could be exposed to similar circumstances but choose to walk away with different experiences and perspectives. X chooses to look and mine for the diamonds that are always present while Y being in victim mode waddles in the muck and mud unmindful of the treasures present. The final battleground is always the conscious projection of our thoughts, we retain the element of choice at all times.
Whatever we choose to see will inevitably be what will always be reflected to us. If we look upon the world in a rational manner the world will in return present a rational response, it’s all mutual. True transformation resides and begins first with acceptance. Accept the moment as it presents itself. Resisting the itch to attach to it any label, thought, emotion or desire will give us a sense of distance. As Eckhart Tolle said, “Become a friend to the moment.”
Separating ourselves by preventing our thoughts, emotions, desires and feelings from becoming contaminated, we can then look at the moment from afar as something that is separate and apart from us. With this awareness we then get to choose our response by deciding what thought or emotion we will deploy and utilize to define the here-and-now. In this state, whatever we choose to ascribe to our present situation will always emerge first from within and control what is without, the internal ruling the external. As the biblical maxim says, “we reap what we sow”; sow joy and reap its bliss, conversely if we sow sadness, worry and anxiety we can be assured of its debilitating depression.
Trying to wrestle with an undesirable and unpleasant situation some of which are entirely outside of our control will almost always tire us out. Whatever we resist will persist, where our thought goes energy flows. If we think more about our unwanted situations we will invariably receive more unwanted situations in our lives and abundantly so, too.
Instead let’s consciously choose to focus and concentrate our thoughts and energy on the circumstances we desire, choosing to focus on creativity and productivity rather than scarcity and fear. It is counterproductive and futile to center our thoughts on something we are not desirous of experiencing. We ought to concentrate on the outcomes we desire.
To experience hardship is to live, as it is what makes us human. And I don’t know the extent to which someone can claim to have lived rich and fulfilling lives that were devoid of adversities. Those among us who shun and constantly try to evade hardships may be circumventing opportunities for discovering unknown capacities of the human spirit.
These missed opportunities can serve to put us out of sync with humanity; failing to unite us at our core, making us less aware of our collective experiences of hardship. This is quite understandable as many among us are not psychologically prepared to face or endure adversity. And with a low threshold for its tolerance they will quickly collapse and disintegrate, unable to recover.
Eschewing conditions that invite us to flex our spiritual muscles and test our state of mental preparedness in the face of adversity will leave us uncertain and without confidence. We then become quickly consumed by despair and anxiety to the point where we are unable to make healthy choices when faced with novel experiences.
Misfortunes are indifferent to all of us, in some cases it is of our own making while entirely outside of our control in others. Lacking the spiritual and mental resources to endure adversity when we are confronted by it doesn’t help, since none of us are immune or exempted from it.
Affirming our own suffering is a given of life, experiences gained can increase our range of coping mechanisms. It teaches us if we are willing to learn lessons about ourselves. Some of the most beautiful and inspiring works of creative artistic expressions were produced by individuals while exposed to some of the most soul-crushing human conditions.
William Ernest Henley wrote the poem “Invictus” while under difficult and trying circumstances, Viktor Frankl “Man’s Search for Meaning” and Primo Levi “If this is Man” are accounts of what life was like while being prisoners at Auschwitz. These men are a few among many men and women who refuse to be defined by their external circumstances, but choose instead to marshal the powers of their minds to motivate, inspire and encourage themselves and others. Two of the most quoted lines of the poem “Invictus” sum it all up: “I am the master of my fate” and “I am the captain of my soul.”
We should never allow the power to choose our attitude and response in any given set of circumstances to depart from us.
Orlando Patterson
