I’ve been thinking about suffering lately … wondering why it seems that some people are subjected to more hardships than others. And I’ve been considering how different people, even different groups of people, respond to suffering.

I watched a documentary last week about a church that was the center of a cult. One of the women who left told her story of the spiritual and psychological manipulation she had endured. She said that she stayed in the church for so long because she had been conditioned to believe that she and her family would go to hell if she left. She said the abuse she suffered was so awful that she finally decided she would rather go to hell than stay there any longer. It was clear how haunted she was from the whole experience, and I couldn’t help but think about the years of unlearning and deconstructing and healing she will have to endure because of what she’s been through. I felt so much compassion for her and her story has stuck with me. Why did that happen to her? I wondered if she had ever had a happy or peaceful day or experience. Why do some people go through things like this when others experience joy and happiness?

I think being exposed to various religious cultures and belief systems throughout my life left me with the unspoken assumption that something – God, the universe, something beyond myself – would fix everything. If I just have faith, it will all be taken care of. I believe that thought process has left me ill-equipped to deal with suffering in a healthy way.

I find myself wanting to quickly move past it, or even ignore it. When “bad” things show up on the horizon, I find myself wishing and praying (still) that I would be able to avoid them, or that they wouldn’t come, that maybe someone or something would intervene before I feel the brunt of them. And when they do come, when I am inevitably subjected to suffering, my tendency is to quickly move past it and get back to “normal”. It’s like I’m always trying to bypass it without ever fully feeling the weight of it. Sometimes I think that maybe I just deal with it better than others. But, the pain I feel in my body tells me that isn’t the case. I do feel that having a certain attitude or belief toward things has served me in many ways, and that I have avoided some suffering because of the way I think about things. But, I also think that years of repressing my true voice, and pretending suffering isn’t there, or trying to avoid it instead of walking through it naturally has taken a toll on me physically.

At the end of the day, suffering in one form or another is inevitable. But, I think the happiest people, or at least the ones who are more at peace, are the ones who learn to respond to it well. I guess this is obvious. But maybe we all just figure it out in our own way.

Thoughts?