Of all the ways that people commonly deal with suffering - denial, rationalization, spiritualization, substitution - few are places of refuge. Most will disconnect us from the very life we hope to bless and serve and may defeat us in fulfilling the purpose of our lives. The sad part of this is that we can never hide from suffering. Suffering is a part of being alive. Hiding ourselves means only that we will have to suffer alone.In the presence of suffering, everyone needs to find refuge. The difficulty is knowing where to find our strength. Suffering is all around us. We may have friends and family who have lost a breast to cancer, or who have AIDS or Alzheimer's and no matter how young we are, we may have friends and family who die. It was a very short time ago that only those with a professional degree became intimately involved with such things and almost everyone who died, died in a hospital. No longer. Suffering has escaped from hospitals and institutions and met us in our own living rooms.
We avoid suffering only at the great cost of distancing ourselves from life. In order to live fully we may need to look deeply and respectfully at our own suffering and at the suffering of others. In the depth of every wound we have survived is the strength we need to live. The wisdom our wounds can offer us is a place of refuge. Finding this is not for the faint of heart. But then, neither is life.
By: Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.