more about suffering

I read in my new O magazine about a woman who had her face taken off by a bear. Before that, her house burned down. Before that, she fell from her horse and broke her back.

She said that over time you just get existential about suffering and say, "This happened."

There is profound power in her simple two words. Not, "because I did such-and such, or because they did such-and-such, or because..." No because anything. It just happened.

I think the most difficult part about suffering at the hands of another human is that we are innately made to love. When someone hurts us, it interferes with our ability to love, and the block and frustration are worse than the insult. We want to love each other. Eventually, over time we regain our ability to love those who have hurt us, but the in-between time is very distressing. The frustration of our willingness to love is the greatest part of any insult.

Maybe there's a way to "let time take its course" faster, but I haven't found any shortcuts that work yet. Forgiveness comes naturally, in its own time.

Suffering

I've been reading books by Toni Morrison this holiday season. I guess I wasn't in the need for cheer. Her books paint a very clear picture of how people have suffered. We have hurt and maimed others, and then we each turn on "our own" and cause pain. When that is over, we turn on ourselves.

There really isn't a way to measure suffering. Bullying comes in a rainbow. My kids have suffered. My husband and I have suffered. Ours has been big enough suffering. I don't know how the slaves managed to bear up and keep on. I don't know how Ghandi's followers kept their strength. I don't know how people manage to heal from deep damage done by those who would dominate over them.

More than anything, how do we let go of the pain? It's clear that if we don't let it go, we will pass it on. I say that talking about it, writing about it, is a powerful way to let it go, let it be, but not have to relive it inside of us. In teaching us to read and write, our earliest teachers were helping us to know how to heal ourselves from the inevitable suffering.