PROBLEMS AND PAIN !

Life is Difficult! -   As absurd as it sounds, this tends to be a great truth, one of the greatest truths.

It is a great truth because when we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult- once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.

Those things that hurt, Instruct.

Most do not fully see this truth that life is difficult. Instead they moan more or less incessantly, noisily or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties as if life were generally easy, as if life should be easy. They voice their belief, noisily or subtly, that their difficulties represent a unique kind of affliction that should not be and that has somehow been especially visited upon them, or else upon their families, their tribe, their class, their nation, their race or even their species and not upon others. 

Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them? What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving them is a painful one.  Problems depending upon their nature, evoke in us frustration or grief of sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair. These are uncomfortable feelings, often very uncomfortable and as painful as any kind of physical pain. Indeed, it is because of the pain that events or conflicts engender in us all that we call them problems. And since life poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as Joy.

Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. 

 Problems are cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our Courage and our Wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. When we desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit, we challenge and encourage the human capacity to solve problems, just as in school, problems are deliberately set for children to solve. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn. As Benjamin Franklyn said, “Those things that hurt, instruct”. It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems.

Most of us are not so wise. Fearing the pain involved, almost all of us to a greater or lesser degree, attempt to avoid problems. We procrastinate, hoping that they will go away. We ignore them, forget them, pretend they do not exist. We even take drugs to assist us in ignoring them, so that by deadening our self to the pain we can forget the problems that cause the pain. We attempt to get out of them rather than suffer through them. This tendency to avoid problems and the emotional suffering inherent in them is the primary basis of all human mental illness. In any case, when we avoid legitimate suffering that result from dealing with problems, we avoid the growth that problems demand from us. It is for this reason that in chronic mental illness we stop growing, we become stuck. And without healing, the human spirit begins to shrivel.

Therefore let us inculcate in ourselves and in our children the means of achieving mental and spiritual health. By this I mean let us teach ourselves and those we love the necessity for suffering and the value thereof, the need to face problems directly and to experience the pain involved.

 

Now the Question: How do we deal with problems and the pain associated with problems? Are there any tool(s) required to solve life’s problems and suffering?

Please post your comments and opinion on this. 
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