Pain Is Inevitable; Suffering Is Optional

"I’m in pain…I should produce a show at Radio City: Night of One Hundred Anxieties.…

My mother bought a Jewish satellite dish; it picks up problems from other families.…

For the holidays I bought her a Menorah on a dimmer and a self-complaining oven.”

—Richard Lewis

On a beautiful summer day at an outdoor café, I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on a conversation. “The more you try, the worse it gets. You can’t win. Why try?” One whined about the arthritis in her knees, the other competed with allergies and asthma. The third topped them by saying it was hereditary. Everyone in her family has problems with weight, diabetes, and heart conditions—she was cursed. For fifteen minutes, they complained about their pain and suffering. I thought, why is it important to have the biggest problem, the most excruciating pain, and the worst luck? I marvel at how people try to out-do one another and share their pain. It’s a competition to see who suffers the most.

We’ve all heard that pain is inevitable; suffering is optional. I think it was originally a Buddhist saying. Hundreds of web pages are dedicated to the saying and thousands of motivational speaker base their keynotes around it. There is even a “Pain Is Inevitable; Suffering Is Optional” Facebook page. Yet there are people in the world who still choose to suffer.

Life is going to give you pain. That’s a fact. It’s what you do with that pain that shows your character and directs your future. We all know people who have endured illness and loss with dignity and grace, while others who have had the same type of pain, choose to wear it like a badge.

Worriers, whiners, and complainers exert enormous amounts of energy competing for the worst-place-to-work award, the worst-spouse award and the overall-my-life-is so busy award. Putting the identical amount of energy and thought into improving the situation is sure to bring about positive change.

Here’s an idea: Take a look at your pain. Decide what you can do about it. Can you improve your diet and exercise so your health is better? Can you concentrate on the good things your spouse/co-worker/neighbor does instead of only his or her faults? Can you put a plan together to improve your finances, education, living conditions, and/or look for a job you may enjoy? In other words, if you don’t like the pain you’re in, do what you can to improve it. Recognize what you’re doing that’s working and let the rest of it go. The more you concentrate on, talk about, and share your pain, the worse it gets—guaranteed. If you want to continue suffering, as Dr. Phil would say, “How’s that working for you?”

Pain is what the world does to you; suffering is what you do to yourself. What does the Positive Power of Humor mean? It’s what positively affects both our mental and physical health. It positively affects our ability to cope with crisis and change effectively. Whether it is life or a horse that throws you, it’s the positive power of humor that gets you right back on. You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find the humor in anything, you can survive it.

Humor is a set of developed skills. I don’t believe we’re born with or without a sense of humor; it’s just simply how we choose to look at the world. It really is a choice. Charlie Chaplin once said, “Through humor, we see in what seems rational, the irrational; in what seems important, the unimportant.” Humor is a Latin word meaning moisture, referring to bodily fluids. To be fluid or flexible is a great way to think of your sense of humor, your ability to be malleable in the face of crisis or change. Laughter is an intensely personal experience. What is funny to one person may not be funny to another person. What makes you laugh is as private as what makes you cry. There must be a good reason why we were given the gift of laughter. Maybe it’s so we can cope with mother-in-laws and ex-spouses. Who knows?

Many years ago, I agreed to drop off my son at a half-way point so he could be a part of his father’s family reunion. I called my former sister-in-law to get directions. As luck would have it my ex-husband answered the phone. After twenty years of being my ex, you would think he could handle giving me directions over the phone. Instead he called his sister in to do the chore. “Marie, it’s the plaintiff!” You have to learn to laugh at this kind of behavior or you could drive yourself crazy. Was that any way to address the mother of his children? No. Was it funny? Yes, I believe it was. I justify it this way: If that were a scene on a situation comedy, I would have laughed. If it’s funny when it happens to someone else, why isn’t it just as funny when it happens to us? We have to learn to see the absurdities in our everyday lives and learn to laugh them away. Do you want to get stressed out over something or find the humor in it and laugh it off?

My two children were brought up in the same house at the same time with the same rules. They turned out to be entirely different. I have no idea how that happened. My daughter lived in Manhattan for fifteen years, and when I’d go visit her, she’d have a car waiting for me at the airport. She’d also have dinner reservations, theater tickets, and every minute of my visit would be planned out and waiting for me. I didn’t even have to think.

Then I’d go visit my son in Arizona. He’d forget to pick me up at the airport. He’s a backpack-wearing, raisin- eating, tree-hugging, mule-kissing kind of guy. He’s a minimalist, so he has few possessions. He’s an environmentalist, living in the middle of the desert in a hut with no air conditioning (because that would be bad for the environment). When I visit him, I bring my own sheets and towels, because he washes his clothes in a soap he gets at the Hippy Dippy Love Store and it has no suds (because that would be bad for the environment). Consequently, all his clothes are gray. Oh, and no dryer, he hangs everything on a tree to dry. Have you ever slept on a sheet that was dried on a tree? You’ll cut your face. Forget about the towels. It’s like using sandpaper. I bring all my own linens.

If that wasn’t bad enough, just before I went out to visit him the last time, he told me he’d gotten a dog to live with him in the hut. A big, stinking, hairy, smelly dog. I was mortified. I’ve been afraid of dogs my entire life. I was bitten by a dog when I was five and my perception of dogs is, teeth, blood, pain, and hospital visits. I called my daughter in New York and asked her, “Do you think I could tell him that I’d pay to have the dog put in some sort of dog place while I come visit? They can fluff him up, do his nails, give him a sits bath, and I’ll pay, as long as they keep him for my entire visit.” “Mom,” she said, “you can’t do that. That dog is your grandson!” “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” I screamed into the phone. Then she said, “Why don’t you do what you tell people to do in your little skits? Why don’t you change your perspective on dogs?”

She was absolutely right. I can’t stand in front of an audience and tell them to change the way they look at life, if I can’t change the way I look at dogs. I decided right then and there to change how I thought about dogs. I have almost fifty years of fear built up and it wasn’t going to be easy. I wrote positive affirmations about dogs and read them every morning and night. I put pictures of dogs all over my house, and even put a picture of his dog, Parker, on my computer screen. I read everything I could about dogs and thought I was ready to meet my grandson. I got to Arizona thinking I had my fear licked. There was my son, waiting for me at the airport in his piece-of-junk car with no air conditioning, and there was that big stinking dog in the back seat with his tongue hanging out—and dripping. What big teeth he had. I couldn’t bring myself to get in the car. He looked at the dog and said, “Parker! No lick!” Parker immediately lay down on the back seat and closed his mouth. My son taught the dog that whenever he was around me, he had to keep his mouth shut. If only I knew how to do that when my son was little!

I finally got into the car and we drove to the hut. He had fixed us a nice meal, some kind of soufflé with nuts and fruit and twigs. The next morning I woke up, went out onto the porch, and sat in a chair, looking out over the desert. Parker was there, drinking from a bowl of water and dead insects. It was nasty. I looked at him and said, “Don’t even think about coming over here.” He walked toward me slowly, got about half way, and shut his mouth. He sat down next to me and looked up at me with the most beautiful brown eyes I’ve ever seen—and I’ve dated Italian men. I really wanted to pet him, so I did, with my elbow.

Twenty-four hours later, Parker was indeed my grandson. I fell in love with that dog. My perception changed from one of absolute fear to one of unconditional love. What a miracle. I believe this story proves without a doubt that you can change anything at all that you want to change if only you change the experiences along the way. I made a choice to give this dog a chance to gain my trust. I’m so glad I did, now I’m able to enjoy all kinds of animals that I avoided before because of my deep rooted fears. Make a decision to have some new experiences and see how life changes for you.

How we react to things that happen to us has a lot to do with how we feel about ourselves. How we feel about ourselves has everything to do with how we perceive the situation we’re in. Our perception determines how we react. If we can change our perception, we can change our reaction and, in the end, change the results.

Don’t misunderstand me here. There are situations in our lives that cause real pain. We have to go through the experience of suffering in order to heal. I’ve been there. When I say suffering is optional, I’m talking about those of us who choose to continue to suffer by constantly complaining and doing nothing to make the situation better. We choose to suffer when we only see the darkness and never the light at the end of the tunnel. When we say negative things like “I can’t” or “I won’t” or “It’ll never change” or “It never works out for me” we’re absolutely right because there is no way we can move on to a better place if we constantly think about how much we suffer.

If someone offers a way out of your misery and you say, “Yes, but…,” then you’re a Proverbial Suffering Complainer. “It all comes down to you,” as Joni Mitchell once sang. Your willingness to lift yourself up out of your suffering is the only thing that will work. When you take no action to change a situation you’ve chosen to stay in your misery.

How do we get stressed out in the first place? How do we go from happy-go-lucky children to nervous, frightened adults? Research in the book American Averages: Amazing Facts of Everyday Life shows that children laugh an average of 400 times a day. By the time we reach adulthood we reduce our laughter to only fifteen times a day. If laughter and humor are so important to our mental and physical health, then how did we go from a hearty 400 to only 15 laughs per day? How can we get back to laughing our way to good health?

By the time a child is three years old he or she has heard “No!” 350 thousand times! “Put that down!” “Don’t touch that!” “Stop it!” “No! No! No!” No wonder we stop laughing with all this negativity.

Think about when your children were babies or being around babies in general. What’s the first thing we all try to do when we pick up a baby? If you said “make the baby laugh or smile” you’re among the majority. We all make goofy faces and weird noises to try to get the baby to laugh or smile and then when the little one does, we praise. “Good baby!” When our toddlers do anything remotely funny we laugh and let it be known that we appreciate that wonderful sense of humor…until the child gets to be about eight or nine years old. Then when he or she starts to act silly we say, “What’s so funny, young man?” “Wipe that silly smile off your face, little girl!” “You’d better straighten up and act like a lady.” “Grow up.” “You’ll never be successful unless you get serious.” “No one respects a wise guy!” “Quit acting so silly!” We’re teaching our young people that in order to be successful, in order to gain the respect of our peer group, we had better be dead serious.

Whenever I acted silly or goofy my mother said “What’s wrong with you?” She said it so much that the first day of school, when the teacher asked us to stand up in front of the room, say our names and something about us, I said, “My name is Yvonne Conte and there’s something wrong with me.” The teacher sent a note home to my mother that night, which read, “Dear Mrs. Conte, Exactly what is wrong with Yvonne?” My mother read it, hit me in the head, and said, “What is wrong with you?”

We really need to look at the messages we are sending our children about laughter and humor. Our children’s sense of humor will either blossom as he or she grows older or it will begin to wither away. They then become that horribly stiff person in the office who just can’t have fun. This is the person who, to be politically correct, is “humor impaired”—too busy being important to laugh. The serious people in our lives are often seen as distant, negative, arrogant, or intimidating. Is that what you want your coworkers to think of you? Is that the attitude you want people to pick up on as you’re pushing your cart down the aisle at the store? If you’re not distant, negative, arrogant, or intimidating, then quit looking so serious. Smile once in a while. There was a time in my life when people would ask, “What’s wrong?” and I would answer, “Nothing, why?” The response would always be the same, “You look mad.” I wasn’t mad, yet I looked angry all the time. I was just preoccupied with worry and my face told the story. I think it’s important to inform your face that you’re happy, even when you’re in the midst of a situation that’s not very positive. Play the part of a happy person on the outside and it’ll make you feel more positive on the inside. Angels fly because they take themselves lightly. If you want to fly, lighten up!

It used to be that the person in the office who found humor in any situation was seen as the “dingbat” or the “corporate airhead,” or something equally as negative. That perception is changing now that we understand how much more a person can accomplish in a fun and relaxed atmosphere.

Yvonne Conte: Keynote Speaker, Author, Thought Leader. Great way to kick off the day. Awesome Luncheon Speaker. End conference on a positive note. Sessions are infused with laughter & positivity. (315)727-8668 [email protected]

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