Suffering

 Suffering, expressed so beautifully in these drawings. I'm reminded of the sentence I read in my Sciology book, "We act and react to things in our environment as a result of the meaning we attach to them."All suffering is a result of losing something that is meaningful: a job, a house, a picture, family or a friend. No matter how small something might seem to another, the only thing that matters is what that small or large thing might mean to a certain person. Who has the right to judge another based on how they are feeling? Suffering is a topic society shies away from. People are uncomfortable with darkness. Recently, reading a novel I found a perspective different from the norm. Depressed individuals deal with the darkness. Instead of hiding it away, these people embrace the darkness, embrace the suffering, embrace how the depression changed them. When someone feels like there is no hope, when one knows how it feels to want to die, one gains a sense of empathy. This sense of empathy gives meaning to life. When you know what it means to be alone you never want anyone else to feel that way. The darkest emotions are the most beautiful. The thing about suffering is it is the worst when you are alone. You feel the terror, you feel all the pain at night. While you lie in bed the only thing going through your mind is how much pain you are in. You think about how that one person leaving sent you into a deep dark downward spiral. The day provides light and salvation from the suffering but it will always be there. If you are lucky enough, you find something that takes you away from the world long enough to re-energize. This thing takes all of your focus so no matter how much you try, you finally have a break from all the pain. But the pain makes you great. Over coming suffering is the hardest thing to do. Getting out of bed, getting through the day takes so much strength. Sometimes all one can do is hope that this day will be better than the last. Maybe this day I won't need to sleep away the numbness. Maybe this day I won't have to fake the smile. Maybe this day I won't cry myself to sleep. Maybe. Helen Keller said, "The world is full of suffering, but it is also full of overcoming it." Though I agree with her, I still cannot comprehend how, if the world is full of suffering, do humans constantly turn their backs on one another?
"Where are you now? Where are you now? Do you ever think of me in the quiet, in the crowd?" -Mumford and Sons