What Are You Doing with Your Suffering?

I’m not a true crime or horror kind of gal. I don’t enjoy blood or guts or gore. I don’t derive pleasure from other people’s suffering so it was curious to me why a new friend sent me a podcast about the wreck of the Grafton. The Grafton was a ship that crashed onto one of the islands near New Zealand in 1864 resulting in four men becoming stranded.

The podcast revealed all the details, all the trials and tribulations these men went through. I was riveted and disgusted in equal measure. I won’t share everything because I highly recommend you listen to the podcast for reasons I’ll reveal shortly, but suffice to say, they went through a nightmare. They had flies biting their skin and then laying eggs. They were sunburned and starving and dehydrated and sick. What they went through was horrific.

I listened to the podcast all the way through and in the last 10 minutes, I burst into tears and not because one of the men died. I won’t give away the ending because I truly think everyone should listen to the podcast, but the half-spoiler is what these men chose to do with their suffering. I’ve heard numerous tales of woe over the years and people have different responses to what happens.

Some people use suffering to turn them bitter, angry, resentful. Life stops being joyful because it doesn’t make up for all the trouble they’ve endured. They compare themselves to other people and always fall short. Then there are people who become selfish jerks who only care about what happens to them. They think no one else is looking out for them so they have to look out for themselves. They use their suffering to become greedy and entitled.

Then there are people who use their suffering to be of service to others. They think, “What I went through was horrific and I don’t want anyone else to suffer the way I suffered,” so they try to help others. They seek to be a bulwark against suffering and make life smoother.

For a long time, I’ve tried to skirt around suffering but that’s not possible. In my spiritual tradition we say that “God” is an acronym for “generator, operator, and destroyer,” and that means things, people, places, and situations will be destroyed. There’s no getting around struggle, suffering, and destruction. And rather than being something separate, apart, or removed from God, it’s inherent to God.

After listening to the podcast, I was reminded we all have a choice about what we do with suffering. I can’t say, “It all happens for the best! Just wait and see!” or engage in other spiritual bypassing, but what I can say is I know it’s up to me how I handle the suffering. I can choose to be a jerk, or I can do what I’ve always done, which is take pain and make it art. I can bundle all the suffering I’ve endured, all my deep feelings, all my everything and turn it into something that touches humanity and makes the road ahead a little less lonely, a little less rocky. Not everyone will make that choice as much as I wish they would. I can’t control other people, I can’t control what happens to me, but there are some things I can control. And one of those things is what I’m choosing to do with suffering.

I dream of a world where we recognize suffering, struggle, and destruction are inevitable. A world where we understand we can’t control whether terrible things happen but we can control what we do in response. A world where we make the choice to do something with our suffering.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.