Suffering and self-pity

Good morning everyone,

I'm going to paste in the blog entry I have for the Meeting Life group today as our quote for the day. By coincidence it matches one of the things we discussed at the study group last night. We got talking about whether there is a difference between missing someone and suffering. We found our way to the understanding that missing someone even if they have died is a form of self-pity and self-indulgence, whereas actually suffering a loss is transformative. The references are to Commentaries on Living, Third Series.

Suffering and self-pity:

K starts with a question, “Do you suffer because your father (or anyone you loved) is gone, or because you feel lonely? “Now which is it? You are suffering, surely, not for your father, but because you are lonely, and your sorrow is that which comes from self-pity.” (p300)

Do we ever meet sorrow directly, or merely use words to talk about it, meeting it indirectly? “When we talk of loneliness, are we experiencing the psychological pain of it, or merely employing a word to indicate something which we have never directly experienced. Do we really suffer, or do we only think we suffer?” (p302)

So we never meet adversity directly. Instead, we escape by all possible means. We are afraid of it and so we never find out what it is. We are running away from something that we don’t know and have never encountered. To escape from suffering is one thing, but to be free of it is another; for that you must look at it directly: the loss, the sadness, the loneliness, all of it. Do you just want a friend’s good wishes and comfort over a cup of coffee or do you want to end it now? “To understand sorrow there must be an actual experience of it, and not just the verbal fiction of sorrow.” (p303)