I have written about legitimate suffering and needless suffering before, but the importance of it keeps coming up for me. The concept is basic to every major religion, but the quote that makes sense for me is from Sheldon Kopp:

“Life can be counted on to provide all the pain that any of us might possibly need. At times, each of us adds a measure of needless suffering to that already weighty inevitable burden. We insist that life’s random mishaps and calamities should not be happening to us. By dramatizing our plight with an anguished sense of personal injustice we exaggerate the pain of chance mishaps.”

Busted.

treeThe first of the “Four Noble Truths” Buddhism is “Life is Suffering.” The first three words of Scott Peck’s best seller, “The Road Less Traveled,” are “Life is difficult.” (Can you believe that book was published 40 years ago? How time flies).

Anyway, going back to Kopp, life involves pain and suffering. That’s a given. He seems to be saying, we can accept it and, as his writings teach, learn to grow from it, or we can belly-ache about it. When I choose the second option, I create another level of suffering heaped on top of the original, legitimate suffering. This is what he calls needless suffering.

I can sometimes recognize my needless suffering, though not always. And usually not quickly. I have to grovel in it for a while before I realize what I am doing. Or someone who truly cares about me finds a way to say, “Snap out of it.”

I recognize it when I hear my inner voice whining, “Why is this happening to me?” “This shouldn’t be happening.” “What have I done wrong?” I also recognize some of the behaviors that go with it. They all fall into the “wasting time” category. Not normal wasting time. Olympic-level wasting time! These include pacing around without any direction (I can put 5000 steps on my pedometer and never leave the house), ruminating while I am busy not paying attention to something else I’m doing, jumping from one task to another while my mind is asking needless questions. It’s a long list, but that’s a few.

Here’s what I know. I create needless suffering when I categorize my legitimate suffering as “good” or “bad” based on my comfort level or the degree of inconvenience. Legitimate suffering, regardless of how painful, is bearable if I let it be what it is: a painful part of life. Needless suffering can get unbearable.

For example, grief is one form of suffering. I have learned from my own experience and from working with others that there are many ways to grieve. On one end of the continuum is the piercing, gut-wrenching, life-changing agony of losing someone. With time and proper attention, however, the loss becomes part of the new normal—a life that continues to be lived well with the full awareness of the loss. Sort of the way a tree grows around and incorporates a barbed wire fence in its trunk. On the other extreme is the loss never fully acknowledged, never fully felt, that continues to fester and inflict subtle of intense pain through the rest of the survivor’s life. There’s never a new normal, just prolonged sorrow.

Life is painful. I must let go of my need to categorize the pain as good or bad. It is simply part of life.