Thanks For the Suffering…

This piece was also posted today in America’s Wellness Network Blog.

Yes, it is indeed just days before Thanksgiving so the natural thing to do is to focus on all the things we’re grateful for, right? Well, as I sat down to write THAT article, I became very present to a truth I have been wrestling with for most of my life. While I am eminently grateful for the amazing gifts, experiences and relationships I have encountered, it doesn’t feel honest without offering appreciation for the rough moments, challenges, relationship disasters and personal failures I have experienced along the way. Where would I be…who would I be, without the long list of terrible times?

Thanksgiving is an especially significant holiday for me this year, as it marks a major milestone on my journey. As we all sit down to our roasted birds and baked tofurkies, I will turn 40 years old. While Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, this one in particular feels more than a little symbolic. Lots of things feel like they are coming full circle, returning me to a sense of wholeness and peace that I haven’t felt this completely since I was a small child stumbling around my New World, exploring new things, new people, new foods.

Like the Pilgrims, the journey didn’t truly begin until I got here, and then it was just one new experience after another. How do I live peacefully with others? How do I accept that your story is sacred and unique and that my story isn’t the only truth around? How do I allow my ego to quiet down and hear your wisdom, as you, whomever you are, are always here to teach me something? How do I negotiate the experience of others invading my space, forcing your ideas and beliefs onto me as if your way was the only way? How do I stay true to my commitment to peace and love when you challenge my lizard brain in such an acute manner? How do I remember to be grateful for abundance when I feel there is something missing?

So, yes, be grateful for the things you are unhappy about in your life.  Give thanks that your life is imperfect, your body is too this or that, your health is a little less robust than you’d like, your career is up and down, etc.

We have a tendency to complain about the things we want to change rather than embrace these things as opportunities to grow, lessons to learn, places to heal. Many Buddhists suggest that suffering is a part of life, perhaps the main reason for being in a body. I used to get angry about that concept. My immediate reaction was often a reflexive argument that the goal of life can’t possibly be to suffer, so why embrace it as a simple fact and not work on improving things…

Then I got it- Human life IS, to a large extent, about suffering because otherwise we wouldn’t have any opportunities to move deeper into ourselves, into our love for the Everything, the Everyone. Somehow, my suffering has carved canyons within me that are as gorgeous as the Grand Canyon and that provide me with a tremendous capacity to love and forgive you, YOU, me, ME, for all the suffering to begin with. Talk about gratitude!

40 years ago, on Thanksgiving, my parents gave me the Hebrew name Baruch, which means Blessing. Funny, really, that it has taken so long to truly appreciate their foresight into something as simple (yet gargantuan) as a name. I feel very blessed today to have had the chance for four decades to live and learn, to suffer and heal, to hurt and to love. I’m not sure I could have gotten here today without some serious disasters, so I give thanks for the suffering and for the beauty (and oy, the pain) of the healing that always seems to ensue.