Pain, both mental and physical, is paradoxically one of the most crucial factors which help us to grow stronger. Suffering is an indispensable part of humans’ life since the very beginning.
I don’t like to suffer. Nevertheless, while suffering, I always try to remind myself that thanks to the pain, I can develop in my life. Also, thanks to the suffering, as a civilization, we were able to learn. We were able to get to know what is dangerous for us. Mostly, thanks to the pain. Furthermore, thanks to the suffering, we learned what things and situations we should avoid. Regarding physical pain, I will give you three examples of how this kind of suffering can help us to develop.
Firstly, when we do sports (especially after a long break), we feel the ache in our muscles. Physical activity affects all the systems and many organs of the human body. In general, workout increases the mass of muscles. This increase is strictly connected with pain, which we feel during the activity, and after it. I always when I have this specific kind of a pain in my muscles, I know that I am alive, and I want more.
On the other hand, there is also pain connected with diseases. This kind of suffering also can teach us a lot of things.
I know it is easy to say, but this kind of torment can help us to learn what we should avoid in the future. It can help us to never come back to suffering connected with the specific illness. We are merely learning. Of course, I do not write now about extreme pain, combined with a fatal disease. But, maybe even this kind of pain can teach us something?
Another, one of the most extreme, indescribable pain is the travail. This kind of pain that can be felt only by women is this suffering that I cannot even imagine. There are a lot of descriptions of this kind of suffering. Nevertheless, I will stress that the effect of this pain is one of the most magical miracles we can imagine: the newborn human.
On the other hand, there is also mental pain. We can feel it, for example, when someone who we loved wholeheartedly had died.
I am sure that it is one of the most extreme mental kind of suffering people can experience. I cannot imagine a worse pain than that. The fact is that I suffered this kind of torment when I was nine years old. Nevertheless, even in such circumstances, we should try to find a light of hope. I am sure that this kind of suffering, paradoxically, can help us to find peace and harmony in our hearts. But, let’s stress it: in the long perspective of time. Sooner or later, we can believe and realize that the person who we loved and who died, abandoned this earthly world, moved somewhere where maybe someday we will meet once again. Faith, hope, memories, silence, and photographs are the only things that can remain from our loved one, who had died.
This kind of mental suffering reminds us of the “Memento mori” statement.
In the long term, after mourning, paradoxically, this kind of pain should give us more power to become a better human. I believe we should sometimes (for example, when we have rainy days) remind ourselves of our loved person who died. We could imagine what this human could advise us if only he/she had lived. Paradoxically, we can somehow develop as human beings through the worst mental torment.
In conclusion, I want to stress that we should try to treat all our suffering as our ally, not as an enemy.