The Teachings of Suffering

Little Green

Sometimes a broken heart 

pours more freely.

Tender as ever and 

strewn about in pieces, 

the pink astral substance 

flows out unencumbered by 

fear-made damns,

untainted by the poison 

of pain past.

I'd like to build a stone 

sarcophagus around 

the foolish organ. 

Wall it up.

Let it shrivel and die,

and be bitter, 

like everyone else 

seems to be.

But it won't let me, 

and I don't know why, 

except that sometimes, 

a broken heart 

pours more freely. 

Suffering has been one of my greatest teachers. I know that sounds like bullshit, but it’s true. The ways that I have suffered in this life have helped mold me just as much as the strokes of luck, the falling in love, or the occasional glimpse of success. Looking back, some of my most proud “loving myself” moments have been when I was deeply hurting.

I didn’t always have this perspective. After being hurt by religion one too many times, my late teens and early 20’s turned me into a surly skeptic. I was jaded and closed-off and sure that I was right that there was no way to improve my situation. I got offered good advice, which I shot down, I was recommended spiritual teachings, I laughed at them, and I mostly just partied my way through while emotionally white-knuckling life.

I was someone who needed to learn the hard way, until I struggled enough to learn how to let in good advice when I heard it. And I did. But all that pressure and grief and fear and struggle started to cause something beautiful to happen—I started to soften. I started to notice the patterns playing out in my life. Whenever I found myself going way too far down the wrong path, I started correcting myself sooner and sooner. The wisdom I had gained from suffering started to help guide my way. I was getting more sure-footed with every step.

Inside of each of us is a duality. We are, at any given moment, fluctuating between our default settings and our higher self—usually distress causes the default settings to come forward, but the higher self is the one that urges us to move more lovingly and thoughtfully. My default settings are a stark reflection of my abusive childhood. When I think back to the rawest version of me, I was angry. I got in fights all the time. I was a walking, talking trigger. I was sensitive, I was bossy, I was controlling, I was competitive, I was blunt to the point of rude. I was fearless in a way that was dangerous. I struggled socially. I almost quit school in the 7th grade because I was too depressed handle it most days. I was mercilessly bullied for at least a few years and honestly that was a relief compared to what I got at home. If I had allowed my suffering to harden me, what would I have become? It makes me scared for myself when I think too long about it. It makes me so grateful that I went the other way.

The thing about life is, it’s full of suffering. From the second we are ripped from the universe and then again from our mothers’ bodies, it starts. The missing, the longing, the sadness, the anger, the worry. So many of us find ourselves in such strong resistance to any experience that isn’t perfect (or any experience period) because we are trying to avoid suffering. Think of the person who got their heart broken in high school and now they’re 37 and have managed to avoid ever trying to love again (leaving a path of destruction in their wake). That’s irrational!! Part of loving is losing. Not everything is supposed to last forever!! Each relationship comes into our lives to teach us something and the pain is often a big part of the lesson. To miss out on a whole lifetime of love because you’re scared of a little heartbreak?! Sounds like a one way ticket to Regretville to me.

It really isn’t about avoiding the suffering. That’s impossible. It’s about changing your reaction to the suffering.

Getting your heart broken will always hurt, but the hurt doesn’t come with so much extra baggage if you just see it as a rite of passage in service of the goal of learning how to love and be loved. Being born into a family that traumatized you is awful, the trauma really does do everything it can to ruin your life, but it can also make you careful, it can push you to heal in ways that people who grew up in loving households might never understand. Being bullied can lead you to be someone who stands up for the underdog, it can make you staunch in your authenticity, because it came at great cost. Being marginalized can radicalize you into being someone who fights for the liberation of all people—someone who could change the course of history.

It’s not easy to allow yourself to acknowledge the teachings of suffering. The ego gets in the way. It knows that to embrace the full experience of being human is to keep it in the back seat, far away from the power it so voraciously seeks. Surrendering to the full spectrum of human emotion and all that can happen to us in one lifetime is a cheat code for life. It is the key to transcending attachment, opening up to intimate connections, and even reconciling with our own eventual death.

Allowing suffering to soften us is one of the ways to stop repeating cycles of generational trauma in their tracks. You can be sure you are learning and healing when you realize you could never imagine treating anyone the way your were treated. You’d be surprised how many people feel entitled to cause others to suffer because of the fact that they have suffered. But that’s because they let their suffering harden them.

Look back on your life so far and consider those moments of hardship, heartbreak, loss, and disappointment that ended up being blessings or lessons or warnings from the universe. Look at the ways that suffering has taught you, guided you, softened you. See if there isn’t any gratitude to be found in that, or at the very least, a shift in perspective.

We leave the blissful oneness of being the universe to come here, put on these awkward human suits, and love and fuck and fight and cry and cringe and die. It’s a MESS! It’s full and fun and absurd and a roller coaster ride and the most profound classroom. If you remain open-hearted and present, if you allow the transformations to wash over you like a river over a pebble, smoothing you out, you will reach the end of your life knowing you lived it well. That’s a fucking miracle. And besides all that, remember—a broken heart pours more freely.

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