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Mike's avatar

Wow. After reading this (twice) and the comments, words fail me. Going to read again and try to unpack when the 4 year old is not so distracting.

On the lighter side you mention animals and nature several times. I have an interesting story kind of related to pain. I planted 3 apple trees from bare root stock 2 winters ago. They thrived in their 1st year holding leaves on new branches well into the winter. Of courses they leaped forward with new growth this spring after I dutifully mulched and pruned them. One tree burst forth with beautiful blossoms and set a dozen apples when I was out of town. It was healthy and spectacular. Of course I dutifully removed the little perfectly formed apples. The tree went into shock and started dropping all its leaves and drying out its new twigs. I thought I’d lose it. So I asked it what the problem was because the other trees were doing good and there was no obvious signs of bugs or fungus. To my surprise the tree responded that I took her children. I have been apologizing for a week now and the die off has stopped and new growth is starting to appear. It also told me it did not like the coax cable over its canopy (it’s a mid dwarf tree). Bizarre huh?

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Frater Seamus's avatar

I think there are two types of suffering, that which we take on willingly and that which is thrust upon us by outside forces. I agree that the latter type of suffering is unnecessary, it is a suffering that is created by nefarious actors looking to perpetrate crimes upon humanity. Life is difficult enough without having to deal with bad actors looking to ruin the party.

In regards to the suffering we take on willingly for growth, that is another matter. For whatever reason, this world seems to be designed in such a way that the path to growth often comes through pushing yourself out of your comfort zone in pursuit of a greater reward at the end. I have no problem with this, other than that it is really hard and I think we'd all like to have an 'easy' button sometimes. But there is an undeniable intrinsic value in taking on scary and difficult challenges and coming out the other side stronger.

As an individual, there is a renewed sense of strength and confidence that you feel when you meet a challenge head on. If you look at that on a cosmic level, perhaps the human race, as a whole, is challenged with taking on these monumental tasks over generations in order to grow on a scale that we cannot begin to comprehend.

In such a situation, our personal suffering may indeed seem very unnecessary as we cannot fathom the value of it in the big picture.

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