Living in the best way 9

. . . "Eighth, consider how much more pain is brought on us by the anger and vexation caused by such acts than by the acts themselves, at which we are angry and vexed." . . .

--Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 11 (tr Long)

This insight does not even need theory to prove it right, even as the simple apprehension of our human nature should be enough to indicate that a man is measured by his deeds, and not by what is done to him. No, the school of hard knocks, the practice of everyday life, should be evidence enough.

 I need only look back at experience of my own life. What has caused me pain? More fully, what sort of pain did I find to be the most severe, the sort I thought I could never bear?

I find that I caused it for myself. It wasn't forced upon me. 

I have seen physical pain, which exists for a very natural purpose, destroy some people, and lift up others. The severity didn't seem to be the difference, but the estimation made all the difference. The hurt is what it is. Now what will I make of it, and how will I use it, either to my benefit or detriment?

I recently knew a fellow, a man who seemed the paragon of toughness, take his own life as soon as he learned he had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. It was the very thought of the pain that would eventually come that he simply could not bear.  I can hardly condemn him, because I have sometimes felt the same way.

Many years earlier, I saw my grandmother dying of stomach cancer. Each and every day, she became weaker and more frail. Her eyes showed me everything I needed to know, even at my young age. I cannot even imagine the extreme agony she felt. Yet I remember how deeply it changed her soul, and how much it made her better. I still don't readily share the last things she ever told me, because they were so powerful. She was little more than a skeleton when she died, but she was full of more love, and yes, even joy, than I had ever seen.

A victim of the 'Black Dog', I'm sadly quite experienced in emotional and mental pain. I would never wish that intensity of suffering on anyone. I have tried to wish it away, pray it away, bargain with God, ignore it, or give into it. I have learned that the only thing that works in practice is owning myself.

And here I need to be brutally honest with myself. The hurt of losing my best friend, the shock, the sadness, the despair, was as nothing compared to the pain I gave myself by dwelling upon those circumstances. I never saw it at the time, but most everything that made me miserable was the fact that I allowed my passions to rule me, instead of ruling them.

If someone has done me wrong, I can give in, or I can stand up. I can allow something to take me down, or I can find the good even in the worst of conditions. I am the one who decides, and no one else decides, how I manage my pain.

Good judgment doesn't remove pain, but it does order it toward our benefit. I feel like I should slap myself silly for the simple fact that 90% of my suffering came from my own choice of despair. Very little of what hurt me had anything to do with anyone else, but had to do with my own thinking, my own anger and vexation.

There can be no use in magnifying our suffering by making more of it on our own heads and hearts. By transforming myself, I can make even the worst of experiences beneficial to my own character. What someone else has done has nothing to do with me. I have to 'do' with me.

Written in 11/2002