Suffering Is Indeed Optional

Suffering Is Indeed Optional

I had stepped away from social media & left my blogs untouched for past few months, mostly been working, conducting workshops & in learning mode. However, life showed me a powerful moment today, that lit spark & nudged me to pen down my thoughts to share.

I have known Gayatri, a remarkable lady & her family for a little over four years now. Her endearing smile adds to her radiating energy as she pours a glass of fresh sugarcane juice with joy to her customers, who stop by her street side sugarcane juice centre. Overtime, I became her loyal customer, because there was something special in the way she served with warmth and cheer making every glass taste better. Most of the days, I would find her managing this centre on her own except on public holidays when her son & husband joined her.

For the past few weeks, each time I stopped by, it wasn’t her behind the counter. Instead her husband or son were taking care of this place. However, today I finally saw her with that same beautiful smile. As I parked my car, she set up the machine to make fresh sugarcane juice with a zing of ginger & lemon (she knows my preferences).

I couldn’t help but ask “Where have you been all these days?”

With a radiating smile she replied “Madam, I was unwell…..I was admitted in hospital…”

As she handed me the glass of juice, I noticed her right hand was swollen, scraped, and disfigured with the ring finger missing. It was an ouch moment for me! I softly asked what had happened? She explained how her hand had accidentally got caught into the sugarcane juice machine and that she had to undergo multiple surgeries. In a calm tone she said “Even if you take good care, things go wrong! Such is life, we cannot stop at that.”

At this moment, I found myself wondering - If pain causes suffering or one can be in state of suffering even without pain- what associates this pain with suffering or vice versa? I couldn’t help but notice, how positive she was, at least that’s how it appears on the outside despite what happened to her.

Time and again as I witness the events of life, it occurs to me that suffering is a choice. For instance, when someone embarks on a fitness journey, they willingly embrace aches & pains of workout and dietary changes as they are aware this will give them greater rewards in future

However, when pain or discomfort arises from an unexpected place or from someone we never wished it would be, we end up suffering. So logically, its not the physical, emotional or mental pain itself that causes suffering, but rather the web of feelings and emotions we attach to it-especially the thought that something did not go the way we wanted or expected it to be.

Like Gayatri, we all go through unexpected situations, yet we have a choice to be calm, resilient, solutioning and smiling through all that. Because our situations are really nothing more than events occurring at a point in time! They arrive, they pass and they never stay the same. An event is not who we are, it does not define our individuality. If you observe closely, no day is the same, everything is bound to change- our circumstances, our emotions, our feelings, our opinions! Nothing remains the same, that’s the very nature of life-its constant movement.

Its feels fair to say that suffering is in many ways a choice! We hold the power within us -to hold on to or let go, learn from it and move upwards or complain, crib and go down the drain! Perhaps that’s why the old saying goes, ‘Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional”

I would like to end this with quotes from two great Masters;

“Through every trial we grow. All suffering we experience has a meaning. Though it seems very cruel, it is like the fire that smelts the iron ore: the steel that emerges from that furnace is beautifully strong, useful for many purposes”- Paramahamsa Yogananda

“Intelligent people turn every crisis into opportunity. When one path closes look around-there are many others to explore. Challenges are a time to be more creative and self-reliant”-Sri Sri Ravi Shankar