Strength in Suffering

Let’s define suffering for a second, a common and sometimes unwelcome phenomenon that affects all, speaks to all ethnicities, cultures, religion and even species. It’s inescapable and inevitable. We as people have defined suffering in its noun as the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship. However, as a verb, I truly believe the description is based on perspective and attitude. It’s how I see and interpret things that’s key. A lot of the time, actually mostly I try to go against the feelings that have negatively affected me and in that, I remember being asked a question – you’re smiling so often lately it’s as though everything is going right for you, how do you do it? And honestly, it doesn’t always work out that way, because life doesn’t work out that way. My suffering is as real today as it was yesterday however the one key thing that keeps me from being immobilised is how I choose to see and experience my suffering. My suffering now looks different from what it did back then and in that, I have the confidence to face it and look back at it with gladness. I am proud of who I am today and some of that was because of my discomfort. Let me not create a false sense of reality and say I take it all with grace because at times I do not but ultimately I choose to recognise my growth when it happens to understand that comfort is born from discomfort, growth is sometimes birthed from some sort of suffering let’s call them growing pains. My heart is that we take whatever is meant to immobilise us and we use that as the very tool to give us mobility. All the greatest breakthroughs have this in common. Resistance or suffering in this context but it was in that when character was formed to allow us to be the vessels needed to sustain our breakthrough. Suffering is inevitable but your emotional response to it is not.

Tags: change, character, freedom, inspirational, introspection, perspective, strength, suffering