The Appeal of Suffering

Suffering:  The condition of one who suffers; a state of pain or distress. 

What is it that I'm anxious about, exactly?

Death and dying?  The decline that happens as we age?  Pain?!  Hell, yes, pain - I hate pain. Pain sucks the big one.

Have I reached the top of the roller coaster and I'm now on the way down, plummeting toward oblivion?  After all the average age of Death in the US of A - for men - is 76.3 dog years and I'm 60.7 years old!  That's getting uncomfortably close.  I can see a dude in a black hoodie, holding a scythe firmly in a skeleton hand, peering at me over a copy of the Sunday Times.

My friend ElderLow had some back surgery a year or so ago.  He has been healing albeit slowly.  He was grousing to his physical therapist, a young woman, about his bad back, especially stiff in the morning.

"Of course your back hurts," she said.  "You're old."

He groused about some of the physical activities he was no longer able to do: golf, jogging, cage fighting.

"Do you see anyone else your age cage fighting?" she asked.  "There are very few men your age out there cage fighting."

She wasn't done.

"Most men begin to have some trouble with their backs," she said.  I don't know why she's such an expert on this except she probably spends half her day dealing with people grousing about their backs.  I mean why do you think there are nine masseuses for every man, woman, and child in Kettering, OH?

We're all looking to escape unpleasantness.    Here's what our Book has to say: "Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to running from pain and problems.  We fled from them as from a plague.  We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering.  Character-building through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us."

Appeal: To be attractive.

Here's a thought for some fun - suffering as a means of growth!  Does that appeal to you, too? It has a great deal of appeal for me.

I think my body is telling me some things that I'd rather not hear.  I think that this mudslide of death has made me acutely aware of my mortality.  I think 60 is bullshit.  Bullshit!  60.7/76.3 = 79.5%.  That is terrible, the thought that I may have lived 80% of my life already unless of course I die sooner which is definitely possible.

Positive Affirmations.

Gratitude Lists.  

I had a friend join me in the hot tub the other day and we talked about such matters.  He's relentlessly optimistic.  He makes gratitude lists as a matter of habit.  He doesn't concentrate on the negative.  He finds work-arounds for obstacles.  He gives it to me straight.  Quit Complaining is sort of the point.

I shall try to balance my expectations with my acceptance.