"Suffering Is Optional"

The full quote is , "Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional." The author is unknown.

Most of my life I really didn't fully comprehend this statement. Now, I think I do truly understand it. I believe life is full of, as the Buddha states, the "ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows." There will certainly be so many times in our lives that we are aware of how painful life can be. This is NOT suffering. We suffer only when we are attached to the mistaken belief that life should be free of pain. Once we accept that life can be painful, we cease suffering knowing that all pain has a beginning, middle, and an end. We suffer when we feel we are being punished for something we may feel guilty about or somehow feel that pain should never come to us. Pain comes and visits all of us. So does joy and so does pleasure. It's interesting that we do not complain when things go well for us and we experience pleasure for a certain length of time.

Non-attachment and "letting go" of our prescribed beliefs about how life SHOULD be will help us move towards true enlightenment through acceptance of how things are at this moment.

Who actually taught us that life was NOT supposed to be painful anyway? It's an interesting question.