We all go through stages of suffering, from the time we are young, until we leave this World. We won't to be able to avoid these stages of anger, grief, disappointment, confusion, and frustration. We can walk into any day care or preschool and we'll witness for ourselves how early these feelings affect us. The little girl wants the toy the other boy has. She takes it away from him, he cries, she gets a time out, and life begins. She's either going to scream and yell in her time out chair, or she'll wait patiently until it's her turn to play with the toy she's had her eye on.
As adults, we can either learn to share and wait our turn, or we can be miserable, act out, kick, carry on, and basically, suffer over our suffering. To comfort ourselves and control our emotions, and learn to occupy our time with something else for the time being, is constructive and will go a long way in helping us develop skills for living a calmer life. So many of us grew up before there was such an emphasis on learning ways of improving ourselves, and not letting our anger get the best of us, and giving our worst to others. My father yelled most of the few hours between getting home from work and his 4 kids going off to bed.
He had no idea what the consequences of his words and actions would be to his kids, and their's. Both of my parents swore, not only in anger but in ignorance of the legacy they were handing down. For years, I suffered in my "suffering" of my childhood. I blamed my father for everything wrong in my life. It took years, and hundreds of mistakes before I started learning about my role in our arguments. Before that, I never thought I had a role! I was angry, hurt, empty, pessimistic, and never knew I could change all that on my own with help from books on all the subjects that helped me understand who I really was, and what my potential was.
I didn't understand other's frailties, nor my own. As a result, I suffered over my suffering. The thing to do would have been to find out how to handle my problems, whether with people or things. How many times do we get overly upset because the screw won't turn or the hammer is misplaced and we can't find it, or our 3 year old spilled their milk all over the table and floor? What about how we feel when we don't get the good paying job we want, or our mortgage falls through and we don't get our dream house? How do we handle a relationship break up or a divorce? Or getting laid off from a job we've worked at for30 years? Do we take each experience and try to get something positive out of it, and rearrange the misfortune into fortunate? When we do, that's when we don't suffer over our suffering.
Sure we are disappointed and sad and even angry, but to turn around and find a better paying job, or a more suited home for ourselves, or to meet a person who shares more of our likes and dislikes, is to stop suffering over our suffering. We can't stop reaching for happiness just because we have stumbled along the way. We can, but then we are doing that suffering over our suffering thing again. Positivity is such a blessing. It enables us to move forward, and keeps the depression at bay. We don't become stagnant and miserable. It's always good to get out of our own thoughts, and help someone else.
Send someone an e mail card, or a real card, or make a phone call to a dear friend. Brighten someone else's day instead of ruining your own. Meditate, read, pray, take a walk, play with your pet, type a letter to someone you've been thinking about, take a nice bath, or nap. Do something constructive, volunteer for something, clean out the garage, do the laundry that has piled up, visit someone you may know in the hospital. Anything to keep yourself productive and not drowning in your own self pity.
There are certain circumstances where time needs to heal us before we can make these positive strides, the death of a loved one being such an example. However, grief can only last as long as we let it. It's best for us not to suffer over our suffering. It can do no good. Sure, we need the time to work through our feelings, but we need to get back to reality before we get absorbed in negativity and defeat. The spiral of these emotions brings us down very quickly, making it harder for us to get back up.
No one can do this for us but ourselves. We should know who we are and what we need out of life to be happy, and go after it. Sometimes, we get stalled in the situations that want to attack us and bring us down, but we can be strong and keep fighting for our right to the very sanity that keeps us alive and vibrant. Our happiness depends on ourselves, and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we will stop suffering over our suffering.
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