It’s been over a year since the world shut down from a global pandemic. In some places, things are starting to get back to normal, but how are you feeling? Are you watching people get excited to go back into the way that things used to be, but you are feeling a sense of dread, maybe some loneliness? Have you lost some relationships because of political differences and from physically not being with your people?
It doesn’t matter how much money you have or where you find yourself in life. When we are isolated, that is a deep form of suffering.
We all feel it but do not have the appropriate language to move through and find meaning in suffering.
“Is there anyone in the house who is not suffering? Anybody can say I haven’t suffered? I don’t know what suffering is. It passed me by? I think that suffering is the great equalizer. And it is something that comes to us as part of life’s journey. Suffering sometimes comes as such a shock because we think that maybe we have avoided it or escaped it. And in any case, maybe my suffering is not quite as bad as so and so suffering. So we have sorrow here. We have reason to have sorrow. Part of the reason we suffer is that we cut ourselves off from other people’s suffering. You cannot really do that and be well. Sorrow is like this blanket. And even though you temporarily feel warm, eventually, it’s going to reach over there and cover you. And then you know, there are those of us who survived that somehow. But the arrow that goes into the heart at every instance of injustice, meanness, cruelty, and stinginess is the arrow we have to learn to take out. Because if we don’t learn to take out that arrow, the wound becomes infected.”
Suffering is strange to talk about because we spend our entire lives trying to avoid it. We buy health insurance, life insurance, and car insurance. We purchase gym memberships and eat organic. We go to school to get the right job to make good money for financial stability. We’re careful to choose people in our lives who won’t cause us to suffer.
Today’s society doesn’t permit us to talk about suffering in healthy ways. In Braving the Wilderness, Brene Brown says,
“We’re lonely and untethered, and scared, so damn scared. But rather than coming together and sharing our experiences through song and story, we are screaming at each other from further and further away. Rather than dancing and praying together, we’re running from one another.”
When we are not vulnerable enough to let others touch our wounds, we further wound ourselves and each other.
Another problem we face when looking at our pain is comparative suffering- the idea that our suffering is unimportant because someone else’s suffering is worst. Minimizing our suffering makes us reinforces shame. Shame makes us hide, isolating us from the healing found in authentic relationships.
Mother Teresa says,
“If you have no peace, it’s because you have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
Suffering makes you feel like you’re alone, but when we look around, we see all of the people we have.
Here are 3 ways to move through suffering:
1. Visualize your allies.
Take a moment to close your eyes and think about the type of suffering you’ve been experiencing. Now imagine the people you know who may be going through the same circumstance. After you visualize them, send them a text to let them know that you’re there for them. When we can look outside of ourselves, we move from seeing our suffering as a singular moment to a collective experience. This practice moves us from isolation towards integration.
2. Accept the things you cannot control.
Something that helps me is the Serenity Prayer.
“God grant me the serenity,
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Much of our suffering comes from seeing our unchangeable circumstances and fighting tooth and nail to fix the unfixable. Learning to accept where we are grounds us and gives us a better vantage to see the allies and resources in our lives and the resilience inside ourselves.
Place your feet on the ground and tell yourself, “I’m here,” without trying to change or fix anything.
3. Move your body with others.
Alice Walker closed her talk at Stanford with this thought,
“I sincerely believe that all suffering, most of it anyway, can be relieved by dancing.”
Moving your body with others synchronizes your nervous system and heart by reminding you that others share your load.
Some ways to move with others can include:
going on a nature hike
attending a dance class
riding on a bike trail
attending yoga in the park
Find your people to move and be with, and know that you are not alone in your suffering.