What is Life All About?

© 2006 by Eric S. Meyer

 Life is full of suffering as struggles and pain, with occasional success in getting what one wants. The higher the goals, the higher the potential for not reaching the goal, and thereby meeting “failure.” Failure is really no more than a reason to allow oneself to feel depressed, although a healthier reaction to failure would be to take proactive action to assess the current objectives and goals, then plan a course of action, upon later act and then ask how oneself how they feel about the situation and circumstance which faces them.

 The main pleasure in life is to connect with others who are feeling pain and to listen and share their burden. Such a connection links two or more people together emotionally. Without emotional connectivity, life would be filled with meaningless moments. With pain comes an opportunity to be truly helpful and supportive.

 Pain may be experienced in alternating form, meaning one person is there for the other, and vise versa. This mean that normally one person is not suffering to a significantly imbalanced way. The pain will help the two friends to gain more trust for one another by knowing they matter to someone.

 Pain may instead be shared more equally at the same time and moment. In this situation, the two friends can focus on being there for each other, to support and embrace each other, being able to rely on themselves and their friend in a evened out way towards getting through whatever the issue may be.

 Either way, pain is invariable part of the human condition, and, as a result, it cannot be readily escaped. Acknowledging this innate fact and reality about suffering, the new focus can be how to share the suffering instead of ways to avoid it. This means instead of trying to constantly run away from challenging situations, one may wish to call some friends, and perhaps one friend will be at a particularly good disposition to help work through the issues. If that friend can accept part of the burden and responsibility for the resolution of the pain, then both participants may gain from each other's commitment and pledge to work through the issue until closure has been attained.

 Simply put, pain is about learning, and learning is best done in groups of two or more. When a person with hardship is able to find a caring and compassionate friend to help get through the issues, the result most likely will be that both people grow emotionally. After all, life is about pain and growing emotionally, so why not accept pain and hardship with an aptitude of optimism and trust in oneself and in a friend to share the hardship and pain. Indeed, the next time the tables may be turned, in a similar fashion.