Waves of Suffering

Photo by Matt Paul Catalano on Unsplash

Life is about learning to ride the waves of suffering. We can run from it, we can numb ourselves but ultimately we can’t avoid it. So what do you do when a big wave comes?

There will be times when you get completely wiped out by a wave. The kind where you roll under and before you come up for air, another one comes and pushes you back in. For a moment there, you feel like you may drown.

There will be other times where the small waves come and it just hits your feet, but you can’t ignore it. So where does that leave us?

When you get slammed by enough big waves in life, you eventually reach a point of questioning yourself. Why am I here? What is the point of all this? When will this stop? What if it never ends?

All normal human questions of thought by the way. But there is this moment of clarity or an a-ha moment, where you slowly learn to ride the waves, big or small. Sometimes you let the big ones hit you because you simply can’t avoid it, like a death of a loved one or receiving a devastating health diagnosis. Some things are just happening because they can, and it’s apart of life. Other times, you may lose balance a little bit but it doesn’t knock you completely over.

Over time, this builds capacity and resilience, if you let it. Either you’ll drown or you’ll learn to swim. It’s up to you. And that’s not to put blame, we’re all wired differently and our capacities are no different. Some of us would rather numb ourselves and avoid while others may feel it all and let it take over for a little bit until the waters calm.

But to life our life without suffering is impossible, its inhuman. Part of the human experience is to experience it all—good, bad, the ugly and everything in between. We are here to learn, grow and evolve. That is our soul purpose. We can’t control the messy parts of our lives but we can learn how we respond to it.

So much of what we go through is very normal and human, we just have somehow forgotten that. And we fear the very humanness that is in us all. All of our emotions, ALL of them are necessary to process whatever we’re going through. So it’s okay to fall apart and get taken over by a wave, it’s okay. We need to allow ourselves to fall apart sometimes and also know when to pull ourselves up to the surface to breathe again. We can’t tread water forever, we eventually have to land and rest. And yes, this will happen a lot throughout our lives, hopefully not in a row but even if it does, you are more capable than you realize.