Suffering is Optional

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. – Kathleen Casey

If you’ve just had a major painful procedure (car accident, chainsaw accident, surgery), and you don’t have any pain medication or some way to blunt the pain, then you are in pain, and you are most assuredly entitled to suffer if that’s what you want (or if that’s the only thing you can do because of the amount of pain you’re in). I’m not talking about the extreme, here. I’m not talking about the “just got my leg cut off” person. I’m talking about the paper cut person.

We’ve all had bad days. Splashed by a car, umbrella breaks, spill coffee, tear in the sock/pantyhose, 37 phone messages all of which are marked urgent – you know what I mean. A bit of grumbling, grousing, suffering, is natural. For most of us, we grumble and gripe, and then we move on. Tomorrow is another day, and our grumbling is done.

For the paper cut person, the grumbling is never done.

A paper cut person is the person whose life is tragic – in their own eyes. Circumstances, nay even Life itself, are against them. They are victims, truly. They got a paper cut and it hurts. It’s proof. Someone brought in donuts to the office, and they didn’t get their favorite. It’s proof. The lead on their pencil broke, and they didn’t have a spare. It’s proof. And on and on. They lead such little, little lives that these little, little inconveniences are tragedies in their eyes. They are victims, and they are entitled to suffer. Suffering usually means griping and grousing to others to show how they are suffering and to elicit sympathy and attention. It’s pathetic and really very annoying.

Some paper cut people have bigger tragedies. They may have a chronic disease. They may be in the hospital for some extremely serious reason. They may be going through a divorce that is nasty and bitter. These are tragedies, yes. What’s a bigger tragedy is the way the paper cut person treats it. The paper cut person becomes their tragedy. They have no life, no personality, no anything outside of the tragedy or how it relates to the tragedy. They are no longer people, just victims. This is an option, and they have chosen it.

The paper cut people who are reading this (provided they didn’t just click to another blog after that last sentence) are now howling about how unfair I’m being to them. I don’t have this chronic disease. I’m not in the hospital. I’m not going through a nasty and bitter divorce. I’m not involved in tragedy A or B or C or whatever it is that the howler has, and of course their tragedy is so much worse than anything I’m going through right now. First off, prove it. Second off, so what?

Even if I have such an easier life compared to you, there are others who are in the same circumstances who are still people, too. People have been going through divorces for hundreds of years, some even more nasty and bitter than yours. And yet, some of those people are still able to live a life, too. Some people have your chronic disease, but they are not just their disease. They have a life, too. Some people are in the hospital for serious reasons, yet they are still regarded by nurses and visitors as rays of sunshine and inspiration to other patients. They are still people, too. These people exist, even if you don’t know them, even if you can’t see them, and you can be one of these people if you choose to be.

You will be in pain. You will have cause to suffer. It is your choice how much you suffer and what you do about it.