“Pain in life is inevitable but suffering is not. Pain is what the world does to you,
suffering is what you do to yourself.”—Gautama Buddha
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To commence today’s column, I would like to share a brief story. One day, the British writer Hilaire Belloc was strolling along the docks of New York City when he observed an African American man assembling wooden crates. Occasionally, the man would strike his finger with the hammer, causing him to wince in pain for several moments. Belloc, unable to comprehend the scene before him, approached the man and inquired, “Excuse me, but could you explain why you persist in striking your finger with a hammer?”
The elderly man replied, “I doubt you white folks would grasp the reasoning behind this.”
Nevertheless, Belloc continued to press for an answer and received this response: “Indeed, it causes me pain when I hit my finger. However, I do it intentionally. The pleasure I derive from knowing that I am not in constant pain, unlike some who are unwell, makes it worthwhile.”
Oftentimes, people who are suffering ask, Why did this happen to me? “We have no right to ask such a question when sorrow comes,” someone once said, “unless we ask the same question for every moment of happiness that comes our way.”
Erich Fromm puts it in this perspective, “Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.”
Unknowingly, sufferings have their value. “Many men owe the grandeur of their lives to their tremendous difficulties,” writes Charles H. Spurgeon. “Storms make oaks take a deeper root,” George Herbert points out. Confucius philosophizes, “The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson always says it well: “Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine.” He is also credited for saying this: “When it is dark enough, men see the stars.”
An old Russian proverb states, “The hammer shatters glass but forges steel.” So, just what suffering does to you depends upon what is in you. “The tests of life are to make, not break us. Trouble may demolish a man’s business but build his character. The blow at the outward man may be the greatest blessing to the inner man. If God, then, puts or permits anything hard in our lives, be sure that the real peril, the real trouble, is what we shall lose if we flinch or rebel,” Matbie D. Babcock reminds.
In his book, Where is God When It Hurts?, author Philip Yancey provided some remarkable features of the pain network in our bodies. There are too many to be cited here, but a few are worth mentioning: Without pain’s warnings, most sports would be far too risky. Without pain, there would be no sex, for sexual pleasure is mostly carried by pain cells. Without pain, art and culture would be very limited.
Musicians, dancers, painters, and sculptures all rely on the body’s sensitivity to pain and pressure. A guitarist, for instance, must be able to feel exactly where his finger lands on the string and how hard it presses.
Without pain, life in this world would be in constant mortal danger. “Those rare people who feel no pain have no warning of a ruptured appendix, heart attack, or brain tumor,” Yancey writes. “Most of them die young because of some medical problem that went undetected due to their insensitivity to pain.”
Joel Fritz once remembered a crippled man in the hospital where he was a chaplain for a few years. The man was unbelievably disfigured. His body was twisted like a corkscrew and all he could do was sit in bed, day and night. If someone came to visit him, he could not even turn his head enough to make eye contact.
“How are things today.” That was what Fritz always asked the crippled man should he visit him. The usual reply from the man was: “Just fine, thank you.”
Fritz wrote this observation: “Deep down in my own heart, I knew that if I were answering for him, I could truthfully have said each time, ‘Well, things are a lot worse with me than with you,’ and I could have understood. But seeing this man suffering and hearing him answer so lightheartedly, always did something to me: I always left the room both humble and joyful.”
“The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter,” an unknown author penned. Voltaire had the same opinion when he wrote: “Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.”
At the age of 15, a young man suffered severe injuries due to a drunk driver, resulting in the loss of a leg. He experienced a happy marriage, but after six years, his wife left him for another man. Nevertheless, he resolved to make the most of his life for himself and others.
This led him to the idea of becoming a pen pal to someone who faced greater challenges than he did. He was connected with an individual who, at the age of nine, had been struck on the head by a cricket ball, which left him unable to use his arms and legs, and he spent over 40 years in a hospital.
The man responded to his new friend with a three-page letter brimming with optimism and joy in every line. He concluded his letter with a heartfelt expression: “I thank God,” he wrote, “I thank God that I am able to write my own letters – by holding the pen in my mouth.”
In the 1950’s The Unfinished Country, author Max Lerner writes it well: “The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt.”
