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Pain visits briefly
Suffering often lingers
Acceptance brings freedom
-安天美
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Pain arrives in our lives unbidden, like sudden rain on an otherwise clear day. It touches everyone without discrimination, making no exceptions for status, strength, or circumstance. When we say "Pain visits briefly," we acknowledge its temporary nature, not to diminish its intensity but to recognise its natural movement through our lives. Like water, pain flows rather than remains stagnant when we allow it pass.
Our bodies understand this wisdom instinctively. A physical wound stings sharply, demands our attention, then gradually heals if given proper care. Emotional wounds follow similar patterns when we honour their presence without building fortresses around them. This brief visitation becomes part of our story rather than our entire narrative.
The temporality of pain contains an inherent promise: this moment, however difficult, is already changing. By recognising pain as a visitor rather than a permanent resident, we begin to develop what psychologists call distress tolerance. An ability to experience discomfort without being consumed by it.
"Suffering often lingers" speaks to something entirely different. The way we sometimes unknowingly construct elaborate structures around our pain, reinforcing walls that were meant to be temporary. This isn't merely about feeling hurt; it's about the stories we wrap around that hurt, the identities we form in relationship to it, the futures we cancel in anticipation of its continuation.
Unlike pain, which arrives through circumstances often beyond our control, suffering involves an element of unconscious participation. We become architects of our own distress when we refuse to acknowledge reality as it exists. The resistance itself becomes heavier than the original burden, like trying to swim while holding our breath underwater.
This doesn't mean we blame ourselves for suffering. Rather, we recognise that within suffering lies a hidden invitation to examine what we're holding onto that no longer serves us. The residence suffering builds often contains rooms of "should have been" and corridors of "if only". Spaces that keep us trapped in versions of reality that never existed and never will.
"Acceptance brings freedom" offers a path forward that has nothing to do with resignation. Contrary to popular misconception, acceptance isn't about approving of painful circumstances or abandoning hopes for change. It's about seeing reality clearly, without the distortion of denial or the embellishment of catastrophising.
This clarity acts as an open window in a room that's been sealed for too long. When we accept what is, [not what should be, could be, or might have been] we move from being victims of circumstance to navigators of our experience, reclaiming agency even in situations we didn't choose.
The freedom that comes through acceptance has a surprising quality: it doesn't always change our external circumstances, but it transforms how we carry them. Like water flowing around a stone rather than trying to move it, we find ways to continue our journey without exhausting ourselves in battles that cannot be won through force.
The journey from suffering to acceptance rarely happens in a single moment of enlightenment. More often, it unfolds through a thousand tiny choices to see things as they are. When we stumble back into suffering, as we inevitably will, we can recognise it not as failure but as part of being human. Like learning any skill, we improve not by avoiding mistakes but by noticing them with curiosity rather than judgment.
This practice becomes easier when we remember we're not alone. Throughout human history, across every culture and era, people have faced the challenge of transforming pain into wisdom rather than suffering. When we share our journeys of acceptance, we become lanterns for each other.
The freedom acceptance offers extends beyond our relationship with pain. It transforms how we engage with all of life, our joys as well as our sorrows, our accomplishments as well as our failures. When we're no longer caught in cycles of resistance, we discover energy previously allocated to struggle now available for creation, connection, and presence.
This liberation allows us to hold contradictions without trying to resolve them: we can acknowledge that life includes unavoidable pain while still cultivating profound joy; we can recognise our wounds while refusing to be defined by them; we can work for change while finding peace in the present moment.
Perhaps most miraculously, acceptance enables us to transform our relationship with uncertainty itself. Instead of fearing what we cannot control, we develop trust in our capacity to respond with creativity and resilience to whatever comes. We discover that freedom doesn't require perfect circumstances. It needs only the willingness to meet life as it actually is, with eyes and hearts wide open.
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<aside> <img src="/icons/backward_blue.svg" alt="/icons/backward_blue.svg" width="40px" /> True Self
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<aside> <img src="/icons/forward_blue.svg" alt="/icons/forward_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Sovereign Mind
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