Why do we suffer?

My husband shared this brief story from CBS News The Sunday Morning Show with me tonight at a time I needed it. It may seem a simple story to some, but it conjured up much thought and renewed drive for me: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/classical-concert-wows-young-fan-with-autism/ As a person who goes through life with mental health challenges, I sometimes reflect on the reasons why we all struggle in life. I think about how some folks seem to be faced with more significant challenges than others, though I do not know if this is true.

My clinical work with individuals living with autism and my previous work with those living with mental and neurological conditions also led me to think about this topic quite a bit. I often contemplated about why some people have struggles that seem insurmountable or problems that are so very, very sad and painful. A very humble thought I have is this: when one faces a great deal of adversity -- whether it is that individual or a person who loves that individual -- there are moments when we/they/you see that life is really quite astounding. These are the moments that stand out distinctly from the struggle that remind us that life and living is, without doubt, miraculous. There is an underlying belief I have behind the work I do in the fields of mental and neurological health; it is that struggle has a purpose and that beauty can come from struggle if we create that to be. I have seen some of what struggle is in a variety of circumstances in my life and in my line of work and heard or knew of individuals whose circumstances were of incredibly horrible, honestly. Last year, when a friend of mine died due to the struggle of depression and died by suicide, I, as I have in the past, tried to make some sense of why he and others struggle(d) more than I can imagine.

The one thing that came to me as a consolation was that a person's struggle (even a person's passing) is never in vain. I, and nobody else would or did not want this for them; yet, their struggle somehow blesses every person who knows or knew them. This is true for any kind of struggle. The struggle I have seen of a child with autism who cannot yet communicate gives the rest of us a God-given fight, a drive, to bless them back with everything we do. A loss from depression or from cancer, etc., blesses those of us who live with the condition to understand it more, to fight for its cure, to help ourselves when we too have that condition. It seems that, in this way, all various types of struggle that exists in all humankind is how we bless each other, how previous generations bless future generations, and so on. If you are struggling profoundly right now, or if you love someone who is, let's remind ourselves of the beauty that we might be able to find in the struggle, in the fight.

I don't know... maybe, that's what life is about -- to find out what can be created from the pain and whether we can make something of it.