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Six Messages from a Wild Garden: Suffering

Message # 5: Suffering


All grey statue in smooth lines of person siting on top of wooden grey plants by the beach at a bay in Dunsborough, Western Australia.
Statue titled Alone, by Simon Youngleson, at Dunsborough, Western Australia. Although this person looks lonely, it represents "connection with all things" (words of the sculptor). Photo by author.

The wind is very busy today, flicking leaves, tossing twigs and creating waves on the winter lake.


Thousands of reed seeds, delicate as thistledown, drift in the stiff breeze. Many land in what I would regard as inauspicious spots. They get caught in spider webs or catch hold of my hair as I potter in the garden. Others get stuck on barbed wire or in bark crevices. Many float on the water and are carried by waves to gather en masse at the edge of the lake, like bunched up, frothy snow.


Whatever happens to them, all they can do is their best in the circumstances they find themselves in.


Reed seeds caught in sunlight as they loosen from the seed head. Lakeside setting, pale blue sky.
Reed seeds loosening from the seed head in the winter lake at Evergreen. Where they land is up to the wind.

Sometimes I feel like one of these seeds. The winds of life blow me into difficult situations: a doctor’s waiting room; a deathbed vigil; an airport with my plane roaring down the runway without me; a traffic jam; sitting alone when what I desire is a bit of company.


In other words, I find myself suffering.


I don’t like suffering and try to avoid it because it hurts. To me, if I’m suffering, I’m not living the ideal life.


*


What Is Suffering?


The word suffering comes from the Latin sufferre, which means to bear with, to hold up, to carry, to allow. In Matthew 19:14 of the King James Version of the Bible, Christ said: Suffer little children to come unto me. What he meant was, Allow them to come to me.


But the modern concept of suffering is opposite to this. To us, if someone is suffering they are collapsing and giving up under the pressure of unbearable burdens.


When I’m suffering, I feel like I’ve lost control of my life. Something else – perhaps pain, heartache, or injustice – has taken over. Like some of those seeds, I haven’t landed in the best place possible.


But suffering turns into living when I allow the suffering to be a part of my life, when I accept it, when I bear it.


*


The Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön wrote a book called When Things Fall Apart. As I pick it up, I notice that for her title she chose the word When, not If. She’s a realist. Everything always falls apart eventually.


She wrote:


Suffering begins to dissolve when we can question the belief or the hope that there’s anywhere to hide.

The winds of life are unpredictable and relentless and there’s nowhere we can hide from suffering.


*


When we are experiencing a serious life situation that involves what we think of as suffering, the best thing to do is ask ourselves this: What is under my control? Then work with that.


Suffering is a mental habit which eases or ceases when we accept – bear, hold up, carry, allow – what life has presented us with and begin to work with the aspects of the situation that are within our control.


We can change our thoughts, and we can change what we’re doing. These two things are always under our control.


Regard suffering as just a part of life.


We have been presented with something we have to bear, learn from, move through, allow.


Like the statue pictured above, titled Alone by Simon Youngleson, even when I am feeling alone, I am connected with all things.


With love, Marlane

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