What is the point of all this suffering?

Last month I read a really great book. It’s a book that had a positive effect on me and I think it does most people who find it at the right time. If you find it at the wrong time you will likely disregard it as “new age hoopla”.

The book is “Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”, by Marianne Williamson. There were quite a number of things that really hit me, one was the question of why do we suffer.

I think the answer is simply that we suffer for growth. There is always a reason for things, and we would not be who we are today if not for the  suffering and growth of yesterday. We will be a different person tomorrow only if we allow ourselves to be.

By accepting that we can learn something from our suffering, and allowing it to just happen and go with it rather than fighting it every step of the way, we may be able to learn a little faster and perhaps suffer a little less.

It’s a thought I’ve had lately and you may not agree. I know when I was in the midst of my worst days of pain and fatigue I certainly wouldn’t have agreed. I had lost hope and I doubted that there was anything more for me beyond the suffering. I thought that was going to be my life forever, but it wasn’t and it doesn’t have to be. We must open our minds and our hearts to what we can learn from any situation, no matter how bad it is or how much pain it brings us.