On suffering & all its other frightening companions
Lately (perhaps because it is Lent?) I’ve been thinking about suffering. It is an old word, finding its origin in Latin, meaning, “to bear.” It’s safe to say we’ve been bearing long before the word came to be.
In writing class, I always tell students that for some strange reason, it is easier to write about suffering than it is to write about being happy. Happy is so generic, I argue. And often, too fleeting, too light, too fluffy. Although what makes us happy, and our capacity to be happy, says a lot about who we are, suffering (and all its other frightening companions such as grief, sadness, pain and despair) is much more specific, much more defining; and sadly, often lasts much longer.
Sometimes it feels, when I suffer, that there is no other feeling beyond this. When I am suffering deeply, I am always awake at 3 a.m. I am awakened by some kind of panic, the heart racing, and my psyche suffering from broken, disjointed dreams. Even sleep is not strong enough to heal me. Sometimes I wake up in mid-cry, tears already in my eyes, my mouth shaped in anguish. The saddest thing this teaches me is that suffering is an isolating phenomenon.
Sometimes I battle suffering with purpose. I accept the 3 a.m. wake-up call and proceed to be productive. Out come the lists of to-dos and things to accomplish. My suffering has allowed me to begin my Christmas shopping. It has taught me so many new songs. I never knew YouTube was such a treasure trove for seconds of delight. Suffering has even added a chapter or two to a novel started almost a decade ago. In comes suffering and suddenly my closets and shelves are cleaner. There is solace in accomplishing things — a respite from all that heaviness. Productivity teaches suffering to be useful.
There are days when I don’t dodge the bullet and allow a second version of myself to watch myself suffer. Here the poet in me ascends. I create metaphor to make sense of the pain. I begin to call it more specific names, create metaphors to beguile me. Suffering is like a wave, a crest, like cold water that douses you annoyingly. Or it is like a piano that lands on you. Why should there be a piano landing on you, logic asserts. Well, why not, suffering answers. I articulate the words to describe the pain of tears. How interesting that tears are hot, like pain is pre-boiled somewhere in your body. Why should tears be hot, logic asserts. Why not, the body answers. Perhaps tears are hot for better clarity, or maybe hot so that they may not last longer than necessary. I think of how much energy it takes to cry. I notice that as eyes tear, the heart lurches, and the usual rhythm of the body is disrupted. I wonder how long the body can stay in this state of grief.
And then there are the times when I simply sit with suffering, as if it were a friend and not an enemy; as if it were something that did not ask to be conquered and defeated; as if it asked for nothing but my companionship. I think the experts call this “the surrender.” In this reverie, I am always in a striped shirt, slippers, my hair in a ponytail. I sit calmly and beckon suffering (and all its other frightening companions) to sit in front of me. It is faceless, nameless, but I am not. I come with no anger, only with a deep need to understand what it is I must do to be left alone. Suffering answers — including all its cohorts — that they can never leave me, as they are always with me, part of me and of me. They apologize for the design. I laugh a bit. I look out into the wide horizon and wonder what to do with this information.
In this real horizon where I live, I am comforted by the suffering of others. This is perhaps the greatest mystery: why the misery of others should be comforting. It is not enjoyable, mind you; only that my suffering decreases through the ability of the heart to suffer for others even if it feels full for the suffering of the self. Body and sinew, flesh, time and space, race and creed, nationality, countries, age, class, all barriers gone and done away with when in the face of the suffering of others. A cat by the comfort room where I work is missing an eye — I can grieve, even for her.
I walk around and see someone in tears and I actually know what to do: nothing but sit with someone else. This used to be the hardest thing to do, to simply sit down and watch someone else suffer. When I was young, out would come the noise and mayhem of logic. I know better now. There is no greater gift than being able to simply bear without advice, no matter how well meaning. We think of filling in the silence with words of comfort but all it does is force the sufferer to comfort you by saying that what you’ve done has helped. It has helped, I assure you. It has helped by allowing more time to be consumed. We sufferers need that — time consumption — because we know and hope, with all our hearts, that there will be an end, somehow. Not so much that we will no longer suffer (by now we’ve learned better), but blessedly, we may suffer less. If not, than at least that we may endure longer. If not that, then at least that we do not suffer to the point that it becomes impossible for joy to sit with us; or impossible for anyone to sit with us because we have turned bitter.
Suddenly, these days, I am interested in the narratives of suffering. A friend’s husband loses a job and worries for her child. A friend’s daughter is not doing well. An acquaintance’s child is suffering from leukemia. A family member is still suffering from the death of a loved one. A best friend’s child is mysteriously sick. A young friend has just lost a very young wife. A friend’s brother suffers from acute depression. A friend is worried about suicide. Another is in great debt and might lose her home. Another is in an unhappy marriage. On the way to work I see an old lady with a thin kitten in her arms. She leaves the kitten in a corner, rushes away and seconds later comes back for the kitten and scoops her up again into her arms. I watch this from the car caught in traffic and can identify with this feeling of despair.
On the news, item after item after item of suffering is reported. It is perhaps even far more unifying than all our happinesses combined. From story to story I weave a long epic narrative of suffering. Surely there is consolation in this, that others suffer and that, more importantly, everyone endures and lives to tell the tale. Every time I cry my husband always tells me how beautiful I am after. He means it well, even lovingly, a reminder that suffering creates a kind of face that is utterly beautiful in its defenselessness and nakedness. I bleed, the face says, and how I bleed, damn you.
Tears and fears clarify the heart, like applying Windex to dirty glass. Suffering demarcates between the dead and the alive. As long as we suffer, we are alive. Did you see the trees in full bloom these past days? How could I have missed it? Without the jarring of the spirit, a gift of incongruity given by suffering, how could I truly see anything? Suffering whispers its greatest secret to me in prayer: “I am not your enemy. Joy is just right beside me. To get to joy you must use the bridge called gratefulness.” To be glad one suffers? Do I have the capacity for this? Religion offers the possibility but it is faith that says the crazy “yes.”
I know this now to be a deep truth: to each one, a measure of suffering and pain is given. There is no more or less. No one has more or less. St. Therese was right, then. What’s the point in asking why I suffer, for why question a basic truth? The only real and beautiful question, then, is whether I suffer well.
