suffering

pain and suffering are connected, but they are not the same thing. pain can exist without suffering, and it is also possible to suffer without feeling pain.
the difference between them is this, I think: that what we learn from pain - for example, that fire burns and is dangerous - is always individual, for ourselves alone, but what we learn from suffering is what unites us as one human people. if we do not suffer with out pain then we have not learned about anything but ourselves. pain without suffering is like victory without struggle. we do not learn from it what makes us stronger or better or closer to god

suffering is exactly like happiness, but backwards. one is the mirror image of the other, and has no real meaning or existence without the other.
for example, take my hand. if I open my hand out like this, stretching the fingers and showing you the palm, or if I open my hand and put it on your shoulder, my fingers stretched out like this - that is happiness, or we may call it so for the sake of this moment. and if I curl my fingers, and close them tightly into a fist, just so, we may call that suffering. the tow gestures in appearance and in what it can do, but the hand that makes the gesture is the same. suffering is happiness backwards.

that suffering, of every kind, is always a matter of what we've lost. when we're young, we think that suffering is something that is done to us. when we get older - when the steel door slam shut, in one way or another - we know that real suffering is measured by what's taken away from us.