Becoming Worthy of Your Suffering

I first heard this phrase many years ago when I was reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. (I didn’t realize at the time it was actually a quote from Dostoevsky) Suffering, to me, was a very negative word and I didn’t understand what it meant to “become worthy of your suffering.” I thought suffering was something you overcome and moved beyond, not something you could become worthy of. The statement made it sound like, that not only did I deserve the suffering I had experienced but that I needed to strive to be more deserving of it. It made no sense to me at the time. For years I was in denial about suffering, other than it happened and it was wrong and shouldn’t have happened.
 
When I heard the catchy phrase about pain being inevitable and suffering optional, I grabbed onto it because it gave me a feeling of control over difficult experiences. But it also implied that suffering was my fault. That if I suffered, I was choosing it as an option. I felt guilt and shame every time I suffered, that I had somehow chosen to suffer, and I had failed to choose the empowered option. Which ironically, caused more suffering. I was in mental anguish over it at times, caught in a  loop of my own making. I thought if I could exert enough mental strength and stamina then I could outperform suffering and be free from it forever. Eternally happy and content, leaving all suffering in my rear-view mirror. None of it worked. Be wary of catchy phrases that make you feel good.
 
I found myself thinking a lot about suffering over the years. My own suffering had made me stronger and more resilient. I understood that, although I wasn’t convinced that I couldn’t have learned to be strong and resilient without suffering. But still I wondered if suffering had value, and if it did, then why was I trying to prevent my children from suffering? I worried that if my kids didn’t have enough difficulties, they would grow up to be entitled and weak. But I didn’t want them to suffer even the slightest inconvenience, not because I was afraid of their pain, but because their suffering would cause me to suffer. 
 
As I examined myself and life in general, I saw that there was suffering at every turn. People you love often die. And if they haven’t died you know they could die. Both cause suffering. Life is full of disappointment, and we experience losses of every kind, we struggle with fear, depression, anxiety, stress, and overwhelm. Suffering seems to be the fate of humanity. To be fair, life is also full of joys, thrills and excitements, contentment and pleasure but only sprinkled in among the thorns. And we often don’t see the beauty and perfection of life all around us. Until it is threatened. Until we lose it and can never get it back. Until we are kicked out of paradise and exiled. Everything is fleeting except for suffering. It is the one constant and reliable reality. It all seems dreadfully unfair. Which causes even more suffering.
 
The word suffer has two meanings:
 
1: to experience or be subjected to (something bad or unpleasant).
2.: to allow
 
I discovered something about the nature of emotions that was directly related to the meaning of suffering. Emotions are only difficult when you resist them and when you don’t allow them to be. Grief is only awful when I am wishing I wasn’t grieving or trying to push it away. Anger only burns my insides when I am repressing it. Disappointment stings more fiercely when I am pretending that I am okay. So, what if I stopped resisting my suffering? What if suffering was only bad and undesirable because I was resisting it, futilely wishing it away? I could accept my suffering as the nature of reality, I could allow life to flow through me regardless of its contents without any resistance.
 
How I responded to my suffering, past, present, and future, was the power I had all along. When I was not in a state of resistance, I found a world of possibilities open to me. I was able to be compassionate with others when I stopped resisting my own suffering. I felt a freedom from the struggle that I hadn’t known was possible. I was simply allowing life to be as it is (like I had control anyway). My suffering was not pointless when I decided to act upon my life as an agent of power. I realized that the message was don’t simply be subjected to suffering, otherwise, it is meaningless. It is pointless misery. When you allow suffering to be, to recognize it as part of being human and you don’t constantly fight against it, opportunities arise that would otherwise have been missed. Joy is found in the darkest of places and beauty appears, right alongside the pain and suffering, not to delete or erase it just in conjunction with it.
 
You will suffer in this life. Regardless. Allow the suffering of your life to become the source of your authority, experience, wisdom, and strength. This is how you give it purpose and infuse it with meaning. How you live, is how you become worthy. What you do with the pain and how you engage the suffering, is the worthiness. It isn’t just what you learn from suffering that gives it value, it is who you become because of it.

Only you can take your suffering and shape it into something noble and beautiful and worthy.