Growth in a Time of Suffering

How do we suffer, and how do we grow?

I was travelling, some 12000 miles from home, when countries started locking their borders and imposing restrictions on travel. It was a minor adventure getting home, and don’t get me started on the difficulties of social distancing at 30,000 feet (suffice to say that food and drink service is completely impractical, quite messy, and a little dangerous).

Cocooned in metal and plastic, breathing conditioned air and surrounded by noise, is something I find strangely peaceful; a chance to reflect without other distractions – I have become supremely unavailable. While flying, I read this passage by the travel writer Rose Lane Wilder: 

“Here there was only sky, and a stillness made audible by the brittle grass. Emptiness was so perfect all around me that I felt a part of it, empty myself; there was a moment in which I was nothing at all – almost nothing at all.”

And then I got to look out the window at an endless cloud bank below a perfectly still blue sky, and that stillness became so clear; one of those moments when you can step outside yourself and see the world and everyone in it rushing by, without feeling the need to join in for a change. 

I know the world we live in doesn’t get to be that perfect very often – and right now there is so much hardship, pain, loss, and upheaval that for some, it’s hard to see much light in the darkness. I’m going out on a limb perhaps, but I think it’s now more than ever that we should be looking for the opportunity hidden in all this chaos. We cannot control every event, we cannot choose the world we live in, but we can choose how we respond to it.

NOTHING IS NEW IN THIS WORLD

If we look carefully, isn’t it just like life always is – the way things can turn on a sixpence; one week world events seem unusual and daily life seems unchanging; the next an apocalypse seemingly looms and everything we know and much of what we love is thrown into the storm? 

It’s easy to see all this change as something new and unprecedented. It’s also very frightening to think that way. While it might be unusual, there are very few events without historic parallels and our current predicament is no exception. Here’s a short list of examples to prove that there has often been something similar:

• Plague of Athens

• Antonine Plague

• Plague of Cyprian

• Plague of Justinian

• Roman Plague

• Near East Plagues

• Black Death

• Columbian Exchange Epidemics

• Japanese Smallpox Epidemic

• Cholera Pandemics (there were 7)

• Spanish Flu Epidemic

THERE IS HOPE

What might be different this time around, and where there is great hope, is the increased interconnectedness and collaborative aptitude that exists across the globe. Our ability to communicate at speed, over great distances, and in such high fidelity; is our greatest strength at a time like this. 

WHAT CAN WE DO?

So, what can we do as individuals? How do we contribute to making the world a better place? How does a time like this become an opportunity to grow?

Practice kindness and gratitude; make good choices. Every day now you will find yourself in unusual situations, where decisions can be less automated and instinctual because you must think just a little more. Use this as an opportunity to do the right thing. Choose to see the beauty in your fellow human beings. Choose to put others before yourself. Choose to manage with a little less – it’s so much easier after all when each shopping excursion increases your risk of infection! 

When you feel that familiar anger rising, because someone cut in line, or someone didn’t give you the respect you feel you deserve, choose to let it go. Decide to comprehend the pain and suffering of others, to accept that they never intended to hurt you; that just like you they are trying to get through this, to make the best of what the world throws their way. 

Perhaps they are not as well equipped as you to cope. Perhaps they are in the midst of tragedy and can barely breathe through the fear and the loss. Assume the best of others, because the alternative doesn’t help anyone. As the philosopher Epictetus said so well:

 “If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.”

MINDFULNESS CAN HELP YOU GROW

If, like me, you have an interest in mindfulness, in the search for stillness and inner peace, then weave this search for beauty into your daily life. This is something you can practice both at home in isolation and when out in the world. 

Two practical mindfulness exercises for this are:

• Find something perfectly banal to make your focus. Bread or cake fresh from the oven can be good for this. My preference is a soup or sauce – stirring it carefully, deliberately, noticing the texture as it falls back into the pot; the congealing residue on the spoon. Let your mind go beyond the perfectly ordinary notion of this as food. Explore the timeline of each component and then return to the simple act of stirring and noticing.

• Sit quietly, breathe, relax, and close your eyes. When calm, relaxed and breathing normally, begin to think of those closest to you. Think of the love you feel for them, the joy you want them to have in their lives. Then slowly, because this should not be rushed, imagine each layer of people beyond your closest friends or family. If you started with a partner or children, think next of your brothers, sisters, parents. Then perhaps your whole extended family. From there keep going, gently and easily to social groups, neighbours, your local community, the nation you live in, and finally the whole world. Go as far as you feel comfortable; as far as you are able at each step to feel genuine love and joy for their existence. Make this a regular practice – like a muscle you will be able to go further with practice.

That’s all I have for now. I’ve managed to somehow shoehorn in a reference to mindfulness, the exhortation to love others, and quotes from people much wiser and more eloquent than myself. If you have read this far I hope it finds you well; that your life is as still as it can be; that the storm leaves you able to rebuild.

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About the Author:

KYLE RICHARDSON

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