What To Do About Suffering

Awhile back I was listening to the incomparable Dennis Praeger on talk radio. His subject that day was that bad things happen to good people (they do, and good things happen to bad people). He advised that people should ask for a heavier load not a lighter load. I am not sure that I agree.

Praeger said our burdens sent by God are a test of faith (I agree). Praeger admonishes that without suffering there is no free will and we are just robots. I would add that robots suffer too, but that their suffering is not meaningful.

I think he is correct in claiming that suffering makes us reflect and introspect and ask questions of God, life and ourselves. It is also so that how we react to suffering indicates our moral character. A good woman takes what comes and envelopes it in love, reason and flexibility to make things better all around. A bad woman ends up despising herself further after suffering so much, and she must lash out internally an externally to exact a sense of revenge for her suffering. Her negative reaction to suffering needlessly extends the boundary of suffering in the world. And it is the type of suffering that degrades and hurts, not ennoble and uplift the victims.

Beyond, some identifiable point, suffering and pain felt degrade rather than exalt the individual. Suffering cannot be eliminated from life but it can be minimized. What events unfold upon us, sent by God, Fate or Satan (Identifying the source of a happening and identifying it as bringing joy or suffering to us is not easy to differentiate.).

How we react to bad thing happening to us is what determines our moral orientation. When we convert what happens to us into an impetus stimulating us to make things a little better for others and ourselves, that is an act of love.

Suffering leaves us shocked, disturbed and discombobulated. That uprootedness makes us alert, wondering and looking for answers and reassurance. At that point we are alive and sentient beings of free will. W have become accountable for our actions. The steps that we take in response to suffering renders the steps taken to be memorable, significant and meaningful