How Do You Choose To Suffer?

Ego as Tormentor — http://artbyvincegreen.com/featured/ego-as-tormentor-vince-green.html

“Who me?”

“Yeah you.”

“What kind of a stupid question is that?”

“The kind that needs to be answered.”

“Answered by me you mean?”

“Yeah you.”

“But isn’t that question rather presumptuous? I mean, you are assuming that I, or anyone else for that matter, already has ‘suffering’ in their life. Right?”

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Okay. I concede. I suppose that is a valid presumption. At least for me it is; and I’m willing to bet it is for just about any being who calls themselves a human.

Perhaps in order to figure out how I choose to suffer, I should begin by determining how I have chosen to suffer. When I look back on the first 57 years of my life, I have to admit I have suffered in many different ways. Sure, life has been good. But life has not been ALL good. No, definitely not.

Here are some of the ways I’ve suffered over my lifetime*:

By not letting go of this thought-memory: Premature birth weight and a birth experience that put my mother’s life at risk and caused the doctors to ask my father to make the decision of which life to save if it came down to them making that decision. He chose mine over hers (Don’t worry she’s a very healthy eighty-two year old).

Through the physical and emotional pain of Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis when I was still in grade school. Leaving me with still-tender knee and hip joints.

Through the painful shyness and lack of self-worth that began at a young age and, although successfully fought head-on, festered over the course my life.

Despite the liberation of thought, through the shame of abandoning my family’s religion when I was seventeen years old.

By contracting the auto-immune disease Polymyositis when I was twenty years old. Causing not only the pain of the disease, but also the effects of long-term mega doses of the steroid prednisone.

Through a lifelong feeling of separation, lonesomeness, and not-fitting-in with the world.

Some level of depression caused by guilt and shame and low confidence levels over most of the past fifteen to twenty years.

A thirty-five year addiction to alcohol, which almost killed me when I was in my 55^th year.

~*~*~*~*~

Now whether I can say that I chose to suffer in these ways…..well I know my ego would jump in and reply, “Ha! NFW. No F-ing Way!” Yet if I truly examine my life, I may not have consciously chosen to suffer in these ways, or to suffer at all, but suffer I did. And if I believe that I am a Being created with the capacity for free will (which I do), then I will admit that I DID choose what I have experienced. Maybe not exactly as experienced, but I have chosen the course, or the path, the direction of my experience.

However consciously or subconsciously.

Some will not agree with that conclusion, but that is of no consequence to me. I know it to be so.

So then, what does this say about how I will choose my suffering now? And furthermore, why should I continue to choose to suffer at all? Now, or in the future.

I believe I MUST suffer. I cannot experience the joy of NOT suffering unless I do. I cannot understand the sweetness in life, the satisfaction, the happiness, the ecstasy in life without understanding what those things are not. Let me put it this way: Say I want to have an experience, let’s say one where I jump up and grab a tree limb, pull myself up to where I’m sitting on it and then hang by my legs upside down in the air swinging back and forth.

In order for that experience and its related feelings to be real, to be authentic, for ME – at some point in my life I have to experience the ability to not be able to do that. I must feel the pain in my shoulder as I try to simply lift my right elbow out sideways to the same height as the shoulder. I must know the discouragement and despair of that physical pain remembering the thousands of hours of exercise and training. I must feel completely pissed off at myself, and God, and life. I must know what some might call ‘feeling like crap.’

Then I can close my eyes and breathe the sweet breeze that blows through my hair and arms as they dangle beneath me from that tree limb and know the meaning of bliss and truth. I can choose. I can choose that!

The funny thing is, it doesn’t even matter if one of those experiences precedes the other. Time is of no matter when it comes to the authentication of knowing. The experience of one is validated by the experience of the other, whether I am consciously aware of it at the time or not.

Ahhhhh. Pain and suffering. Bring it on. As it’s been said, “It’s all good.”

~*~*~*~*~

So now, how do I choose to suffer?

I choose to suffer willingly. I accept it and I accept that it is going to happen. I own it, knowing that ‘it’ is only but one half of authentic experience.

I choose to suffer as a human being. I’m not going to say I choose to suffer without out complaint. I don’t have that much control over my ego yet. I’m just human.

I choose to suffer with a sense of adventure. Every episode of suffering in my life has placed me in unexpected territory. And as I trudged on through, however slowly, the scenery of that territory has always changed.

I choose to suffer so I can write my life story. The suffering is simply an inkwell.

I choose to suffer together. With you. We’ll share the suffering, and we’ll share the NOT suffering. We’ll have the authentic experience of being a human being for a while.