There are some days when all the world should feel right. The sun is shinning. The sky is the brightest blue you’ve seen in weeks. It’s not to hot and its not too cold. The trees are green. The grass is long. Birds are singing in the air. It all looks and feels perfect, and yet... it’s not. There’s an aching inside your heart. One you can’t seem to understand. It’s a sadness and you don’t know where it’s coming from. Is it a longing for something from the past? Or a fear of something from the future? You can’t put your finger on it.
Then this is when it begins to get worse. You begin to think, there must be something wrong with me. I should be happy. People around me are happy. I’m not. People around me are smiling. I’m not. People around me seem to have joy. I don’t. Everything around me is so good. The people in my life. The work I do. The house I live in. The life I live is so good. There are others in this world that would love my life. And yet I don’t. There is something missing. But nothing is missing. It must be me.
Something is wrong with me. I must be broken.
I’m here to tell you, you are not broken my friend.
No. You, are simply human.
There are days when life feels heavy. There are days when we can’t quite put our finger on why. There are days we long for something we can’t even describe. There are days when we feel pain. However, we do not have to add suffering to that pain. We begin adding suffering when we believe things should be different. When we begin to tell ourselves how we should be instead.
Pain is inevitable and it’s unavoidable.
But suffering, suffering is optional.
Suffering comes when we try to resist the sadness. When we think it should be different. Suffering comes from making these things mean something negative about ourselves. But as I’ve said here today and I’m sure you’ve heard it elsewhere before.
Pain is inevitable and it’s unavoidable. Suffering, is optional.
So how do we stop the suffering? There is no way around it. We must go through it. We must be willing to believe that nothing has gone wrong here. Be even more willing to process and feel our emotions. Yuck I know. Believe me. If there was another way I would totally share it with you. Because I would much rather do something else instead. But there is magic in this willingness. Magic in the processing and feeling of it. We can still carry on and go about our day. The ache, the sadness, the pain it can come along to.
I love how my mentor describes it about her anxiety. Some days it just stays with her, and she takes it along for the day like she would carry a heavy purse. I’ve helped some of you move your purse. I know you can carry a heavy one around. It’s like that. You know the weight of it. But it’s just there with you.
The magic that happens when suffering is gone and only pain remains is to be in that same day. The sun is shinning. The sky is the brightest blue you’ve seen in weeks. It’s not to hot and its not too cold. The trees are green. The grass is long. Birds are singing in the air. It all looks and feels perfect, and yet it’s not. When you carry the beauty and the pain. It somehow looks and feels perfect just as it is. There's possibility you may even find,
the pain gets lighter.
Love you madly.
Leslie
P.S. Not quite sure how to process or feel your emotions? Email me at leslie.canup@gmail.com. Type -no more suffering- in the subject line and I’ll send you a quick little worksheet to help you get started.
