Pain. Ouch. No one likes it. Many will do anything to avoid it. Some ignore it and a few actually seek it out. Why such differing reactions?

It is because many (but importantly, not all) associate pain with suffering. It is critical to recognize that suffering is the result of resisting pain, it is not its automatic companion. Pain may be inflicted from an external source but suffering cannot. Suffering is a choice we make and one no one can make for us. In defiance of all this, when in pain most of us choose to suffer.

Pain and suffering are not synonymous. Any committed athlete who has experienced the satisfaction of the old adage, “no pain, no gain” can tell you that they do not suffer when in pain, in fact quite the opposite. Chances are you have had the experience of having pain without the suffering. What was different then when all the other times they seemed inseparable? The difference is the meaning you chose to give to the experience.

Meaning holds the key. We have conditioned ourselves to experience exercise or self control or frugality or hard work or {insert your own} as suffering. But it is merely painful. We had to take an additional step to view it as suffering. Why not instead mindfully refuse to take that last step to suffering?

When you experience pain without any unnecessarily associated suffering, you develop a whole new relationship with pain. Welcome it when it arrives, experience it completely, and you will find it goes away, having succeeded in sending you its important message. When you resist it the message is blocked, you experience suffering, and you set yourself up for an even greater pain as the message tries even harder to get through to you.

Pain is inevitable. It is inextricably linked to how we learn. Suffering is completely avoidable. A life without pain doesn’t even look like life. But a life without suffering looks like paradise. Choose paradise. It beats suffering.

Where in your experience have you made a distinction between pain and suffering? Share it below by commenting.