Suffering takes many forms: it can be internal and gradually rob you of the joy of living; it can be something that suddenly enters your life and turns it upside down: an accident, the loss of a loved one, a child taking a path you would never have imagined; a marriage that falls apart… In these and many other cases, we come into contact with pain… Life seems to stop, and we hold our breath.
And yet… life does not stop! Light in the darkness is possible to the extent that we accept what happens to us and somehow make it bloom.
Why me?
When suffering bursts into our lives, it is human to think - and almost cry out to heaven: “Why me?”
Each of us is created for complete joy and for life, so rejecting all suffering is in our DNA: at first, thinking about pain, in any of its forms, frightens us; when we look through it, we see only darkness, and it is difficult to imagine that there is also light within that darkness, but if we try to open our hearts in this direction, we may be amazed…
Let’s think about it… Why not me?
A first step could be the very difficult one of trying to change our perspective: instead of asking ourselves, “Why me?”, asking ourselves: “Why not me?”.
Unfortunately, pain touches every life, so when it touches ours, one way to begin accepting it is to understand that it can happen, that just as it happens to others, it can happen to me too.
Suffering is part of life and is life
“Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, but learning to dance in the rain”. This famous phrase by Gandhi can be a springboard for reflecting and thinking differently about the reality of suffering that may affect us personally or affect our loved ones: life is made up of joy and pain, light and shadow, storm and calm… If, when we are suffering, we wait only for it to pass, it is like waiting for life itself to pass, whereas we can live within that pain…
And if we adopt this perspective, we might also discover that there is light in the darkness.
Even when we are faced with irreversible situations, our attitude toward them can make a difference. Accepting suffering as an integral part of our human journey opens us to a path of growth and awareness, teaching us that, even in the inevitable, we can find the strength to continue our journey: along this painful path, we might encounter friends we never thought were such; we might discover that we have an inner strength we had never felt before; we might engage in an intense dialogue with heaven and learn to raise our eyes…
Saint Margaret has been and continues to be a teacher in suffering, disabled since birth, yet she knew how to turn her suffering into a song of gratitude and life! Let us try to learn from her, but above all let us feel her close to us, because she will surely know how to understand every moment of ours, including those of rebellion and non-acceptance.
The Italian Union of the Blind in Perugia has also produced an audiobook that can be requested free of charge by all blind and visually impaired people by writing an email to uicpg@uiciechi.it
