The truth that many people never understand is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt.*
Thomas Merton

He acknowledged me when I most needed it. I was empowered in the midst of personal erosion, and my life has been very different for it. I swore to myself then that whenever I came across someone “going under” or in the throes of disacknowledgement, I would try to reach and acknowledge that person as I had been acknowledged.**
Jean Houston

It is likely that what we hope for lies
on the other side of suffering –
The thing we most want to avoid becomes
the means for growth and momentum.

The ancients knew this and
wrote it into their myths,
Now recognised in the hero’s journey as
the ordeal or abyss or death and rebirth.

Every human suffers, but
those who have passed and transformed through suffering^
become our listeners and guides, and
we can be counted among them.

*Oliver Burkeman’s The Antidote;
**Jean Houston’s The Possible Human;
^Here are two responses you may want to try: 1. write about the suffering in the second or third person – sense the distance this begins to create; 2. imagine where you sense you carry the suffering inside you, noticing its shape, colour, texture, and listen for what it is trying to say – perhaps write these things down using the first response.