Tiny Buddha, Simple Wisdom for Life's Hard Questions. Lori Deschene

for people far removed from me and my debilitating apathy. I'd seen therapist after psychiatrist after pharmacist; I was on anti-depressants, mood stabilizers, and tranquilizers. My whole life was about making sure I didn't have to feel. But how could I see such tragedy and not feel? And even worse, how could I be seeing it and still be so concerned with what I was doing and feeling? What was wrong with me that I was so absorbed in what was wrong with me?

      The truth, as messy as it sounds, is that the only way out is through.

      That's the thing about feelings: Sometimes we resist them, and then we sit around feeling more feelings about our feelings, drowning in reactive emotions. We remember what happened and wonder what, if anything, we did to provoke it. We wonder what we could have done to prevent it. We wonder if we deserved it. We think about how unfair things are and how we wish we could go back in time to change them. We think about how we handled things, and if maybe we could have made other choices to change the outcome of what it is. And then after all this resistance, we wonder what's wrong with us for struggling so much in our own self-absorption. After all, there are so many other worse things going on in the world.

      The truth, as messy as it sounds, is that the only way out is through. And the only way to let go is to truly believe in the possibility of a different way of being—to know in our head and in our heart that we can live a life that doesn't revolve around having been hurt or fearing future pain. We don't always realize it when we're sitting in our own self-destructed ground zero, but there will be a day when we feel better—if we just let ourselves go through it. Everything gets better with time; how much time is up to us. It's dependent on when we choose to change the stories we tell about our lives; when we decide to spend more time creating the life we want than lamenting the hand we've been dealt; and when we realize that no one's love, forgiveness, or acceptance can be as profoundly healing as our own.

      Maybe if I stopped trying to control how I hurt, I'd feel a pain that would teach me what I need to do to love life more and need pain less.

      As I looked at my new friend, vulnerable and yet so resilient, I wanted to love and heal her. I couldn't see it, but I knew she must be cracked beneath the surface. I imagined that she cried, screamed, and wailed herself through lonesome, traumatic nights. I visualized her collapsing into the arms of people she loved—other survivors who understood. I wanted to take it all away. I wanted to save her from a suffering that I could only imagine ate away at her soul day and night. I wanted to be her Prozac. I wanted to make her numb to the reality of her losses.

      Then I realized that in that moment, she didn't need a hero. In that moment, she was existing independent of her tragic past. She wasn't heaving, having flashbacks, or fighting with the injustices of the world. She was responding to what was in front of her. She was eating a salad, albeit a wilting one; listening to music she seemed to enjoy; and acknowledging me, an absolute stranger sharing a once-in-a-lifetime experience within an eerily tame Times Square. She didn't need someone to take the pain away forever, because she was taking forever one minute at a time.

      We all choose from moment to moment where we focus our attention and what we tell ourselves. We're always going to want to have more of the good things, less of the bad things, and a greater sense of control over the distribution. While we can't control that life involves hurting, we can control how long we endure it and what we do with it.

      To a large degree, it's irrelevant to question why we have to suffer, since that just prolongs acceptance of what is. But it's human nature to want to understand. If we're going to form conclusions, they might as well be empowering ones that help us work through pain and let go. With that in mind, I asked on Twitter, “Why is there suffering in the world?”

      PAIN IS A TEACHER

      Suffering should be used as a teacher. This teacher will teach you about yourself and the world around you. ∼@d1sco_very

      There is suffering in the world to make people wiser and stronger. ∼@ittybittyfaerie

      Without suffering no lessons will be learned; without suffering none will be necessary. ∼@andrew2pack

      We experience suffering to understand and realize our true strength. Pain leads us to improve our quality of life and open to love. ∼@ditzl

      Do not seek justification for suffering. There is none. Accept its existence and learn from it. ∼@Mark10023

      It's a natural human instinct to resist pain and to avoid its causes at all costs. In fact, we experience a biological response to perceived danger that tells us when to run for our lives—or in some cases, when to sit around stressing about our inability to run as quickly as we'd like. Just like an animal senses it might be eaten and receives an increase in adrenaline, enabling escape, early humans also developed a fine-tuned fight-or-flight response to survive in a dangerous world. It originates in the amygdala—the part of the brain that creates fear conditioning.

      The only difference between us now and us then is that instead of being attacked by lions, as we may have been centuries ago, we're more likely to get in romantic squabbles or professional confrontations. More often than not, when we start kicking and screaming, there's little if any real threat; there's the just the fear of something potentially uncomfortable. We know intellectually that a disagreement or challenge at work won't kill us—and that stressing won't do anything to change what was or what will be. But we've conditioned ourselves to fight for control over our circumstances; and when that control seems to slip away, we panic. It's an ironic way of avoiding discomfort, but sometimes we make ourselves miserable to be sure that nothing or no one else can. We choose to hurt ourselves through stress and dread just to be sure we're prepared when something else could potentially hurt us.

      We can take almost anything that hurts and recycle it into something good once we're ready to learn from it.

      On the other end of the spectrum, we've historically romanticized pain. We're always consuming survivor stories, watching movies and online videos about success after extreme adversity, and channeling our inner Nietzsche—telling ourselves that what doesn't kill us only makes us stronger. To some degree, this is good, because we're reminding ourselves that it is possible to bounce back after a difficult time. But it's almost as if we imagine the greater the pain, the greater the spirit; or the harder the journey, the more rewarding the destination. It's as if we believe the one who hurts the most learns the most and has the most to give the world. Or perhaps we linger in the exhausting act of trying to control the chaos because that allows us to avoid acknowledging the gap between who we are and who we want to be.

      In The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle explains that we hold on to problems because they give us a sense of identity. This has been true for me. For years, I focused all my pain into the will to wither away. After weeks of surviving on a small selection of Sweet'N Low—flavored, low-calorie blandness, I'd feel shooting pains in my chest, like my heart was trying to escape its prison. My abdominal muscles would contract and spasm inside the cavern that was my stomach, while my mind spun in a psychedelic hypnotizing swirl. I'd collapse, clammy and wobbly, to the floor just outside the bathtub and pray that my brother or sister would walk by the door and hear me panting shallow requests for help to my bed. I was always waiting for someone to rescue me, while secretly hoping they wouldn't jeopardize my status as someone who always needed to be saved.

      Eventually I'd crawl my way to the kitchen where I'd lay with my cheek against the cool tile, nibbling on a saltine, secure in the knowledge I had to feel only one knowable bodily pain. With such extreme physical weakness and the possibility of severe malnourishment, there was just no need to think about anything else that hurt in my life. Nothing else was as dangerous and life-threatening. The weightiness of this problem, juxt aposed against my own spectacular physical lightness, obscured the reality of my deep emotional hurt. Within this persistent suffering, I felt good at avoiding pain. It took years for me to consider that maybe if I stopped trying to control how I hurt, I'd feel a pain that would teach me what I need to do to love life more and need pain less. That maybe if I released the torture that made me feel safe, I'd wade through the discomfort