Pain and Suffering

There is a difference between pain and suffering.

I don't want either in my life, but I think I'm coming to understand that pain doesn't have to equal suffering.

I was told by buddhists that suffering is a result of unmet expectations. Which of course means that if you adjust or do away with expectation you won't suffer.

If you expect to live a long life free of pain, and you don't, you will suffer.

If you expect someone to agree with everything you say, and to always be sensitive and outwardly affectionate, you will suffer.

Slightly different examples, but both true, and both important.

So I'm trying to keep this in my mind at the moment.

My want is hard to combat though.
I feel like a toddler - I want everyone to love me. I want everyone to be with me all the time. I want everyone to be happy.

Which is unrealistic, and will only lead to unmet expectations (if ever there were unrealistic expectations, I think mine are it).

And sometimes I'm ok with not having those expectations met. On some level I think I need to suffer. I feel like, on a very naive and romantic level, suffering is what I deserve and what will finally make me a legitimate artist, or person, or whatever.

But is that true?

And what a strange position to put yourself in - if you set yourself up to expect suffering, and you do experience it, your expectations are met but you suffer anyway. I've avoided unmet expectations, but suffered anyway.

Besides which, why should I suffer when I know that suffering isn't romantic or philosophically crucial to artistic endeavour?



This is what I'm thinking about this weekend. And I know full well that this conversation is just as likely to be something I'll have on my own for the rest of my life. And I don't expect (pun?) that I'll magically transfer it to active practice fully. But who knows, maybe?

Maybe we aren't all doomed to be monumentally articulate on our short-comings, while similarly spectacular in our failure to put that knowledge to work.

And maybe that won't make me any less of an artist...

And maybe that doesn't matter...