Suffer-ability
Before reading, I want you to stop for 60 seconds and fantasize about winning the lottery. Okay go!
That was fun, but now back to reality. I’m sure you didn’t fantasy about protecting your winnings, paying taxes, safely investing, avoiding the devaluation of your money due to inflation, or people coming out of the woodwork asking you for money. Instead, you probably thought about all the things you would do and buy and all the freedom you would have after quitting your job. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work like that. Even people who win the lottery have problems. Now, they might be better problems to have than being poor, but still, they’re problems, nonetheless.
Life is not perfect, and regardless of our situation or circumstances, we can never entirely escape stress or problems. While we can’t avoid them entirely, we can control the types of problems we have if we’re willing to suffer. For instance, most people would rather have a good paying job with a corner office than work part-time for poor pay. However, to obtain the good paying job with a corner office, you must get a good education, work long hours, and be willing to persevere until you get a raise, promotion, and big corner office. All these things could be described as suffering. The part-time, poor paying job doesn’t require doing any of these things but causes all kinds of suffering in other areas.
Regardless life requires dealing with problems and suffering. Another example would be working out and eating right. Working out requires a sacrifice of time, hard work, being sore, and perseverance. Eating right requires sacrificing immediate satisfaction. However, this suffering rewards you with good health, feeling energetic, and improvements in appearance. Most refuse to make these sacrifices and instead choose to suffer from being overweight, weak, fatigued, and sick.
The point is, that no matter what life is going to send problems your way. Thankfully, we have the opportunity to choose what kind of problems we have. If we’re willing to make sacrifices and suffer, then we get better problems. Instead of trying to avoid suffering all together, which isn’t going to happen no matter what, we should embrace it. Take control of how you suffer. You’re suffer-ability will result in better problems and better outcomes.
