Suffering Connects Us ALL

We live in a society that tells us we are worthy, we have made it, and that we are successful when we experience less and less suffering, hurting, and moments of pain. Though this is a quiet undercurrent, social media and what see all around us paint a picture that to suffer means we are in some way bad or failing. This episode is all about breaking that concept - recognizing that to be human is to suffer, but suffering doesn't have to be BAD, doesn't have to be the end of the story.
Note: This track may contain explicit language

Transcript

Wake the Fuck Up,

The podcast that mingles mindfulness,

Buddhism,

Brain science,

Evolutionary biology,

And real authentic human experience.

Welcome to Wake the Fuck Up.

Hello,

And a long welcome back to this episode of the Wake the Fuck Up podcast.

My name is Tiffany Andres and I am your host.

It's been a while.

And to be honest,

I'm not really sure where this episode will lead.

I'm sitting here this evening in the dark and the beauty of my home and having a beautiful conversation with a friend about suffering.

And I've realized in this moment how many incredible,

Beautiful,

Powerful,

Radiant,

Light-filled,

Love-giving human beings I have in my life that are currently experiencing quite a bit,

A great deal of suffering.

Whether it is sickness and illness of loved ones,

Whether it is difficulty with the current state of their own lives,

Their own experiences,

Feeling trapped in the spaces that they're in,

Whether it's the loss through death or separation of people we love,

There is just so much heartache and heartbreak in the world.

And in a way,

I think I felt and feel compelled to record this episode first and foremost just as an acknowledgement of the fact that suffering is real,

That it's almost the nature of this existence of being human,

That we have experiences that are painful,

That cause us pain,

Hurt.

You know,

I heard recently on another podcast that emotional pain manifests in the brain specifically,

But I know we experience it in our bodies in the same way that we experience physical pain.

Emotional pain actually is received by the brain in the same way as physical pain.

We feel it like it hurts.

You know,

The language that we use can be so powerful when you're really with someone in a moment of deep emotional suffering,

We say it hurts.

You know,

It does.

And yet we live in a society and in a time where we don't talk about this hurt,

Where this fucking exquisite,

Raw,

Beautiful,

Real part of being human that connects all of us,

There's some sense of shame in discussing it and in sharing it with each other and bearing ourselves open to what's real.

It's like the measure of our success in life and attainment for so many of us is how little we suffer.

And I say us because absolutely that's true,

Has been true in my life for me.

I think in a previous episode I mentioned that in a quiet and very unconscious way for many years,

You know,

I believed that my meditation and my mindfulness practice would make me less human,

That in some way they would make me suffer less or experience less suffering.

And what I've come to understand is yes,

You know,

In some ways that's true.

We have the capacity to begin to experience our suffering differently.

But I started this episode by saying that this moment of deciding to record this episode came from the recognition of how many fucking incredible human beings I am surrounded by in my life that are hurting.

And there's never been a time where it's felt more real to me that this beautiful life in existence that we're all living doesn't work such that good people get all good things in their life and bad people get all bad things,

Right?

It's not a measure of our worth or our value or our goodness to look at how much or how little we suffer as some indication of whether we've made it or whether we've done enough or whether we're worthy enough or we've worked hard enough.

If we look at the natural world around us,

Life is constantly happening.

You know,

In watching these nature shows like Planet Earth and the image that's coming to my mind is this episode I think of the most recent season of Planet Earth that shows these poor fucking lizards that as they are cracking their shells and breaking through the first pieces of sand to come alive into the world,

They start moving and they are surrounded by hundreds of snakes and the tumultuousness of watching this footage and hoping these lizards make it is absolutely insane,

You know?

They're sprinting for their lives from the moment they take their first breath and there's like this sense of overwhelming sadness and like also thank God I'm not this lizard.

But that's just one perspective,

Right?

These snakes have evolved to know that these lizards are born at this time and this moment in this place they rely on catching these creatures to be able to eat,

To be able to live,

Right?

And these nature shows do such an incredible job of giving you a particular creature to root for,

Right?

Whether it's the predator or the prey,

Sometimes you want the predator to win because they tell you the story of the life that they've lived and how they're not going to be able to feed their young if they don't get this meal and we feel for them,

Right?

And there's something so profoundly beautiful about being able to feel for another creature,

Whether it's a human being or not,

This,

My loves,

Is compassion.

This is the compassion that is talked about in Buddhism,

One of the four limitless qualities of compassion.

And it's wild,

You know.

The other day I was watching a TV show about a woman who had lost her son and she says in the show that every morning she wakes up and it just hits her.

It hits her that he's gone.

And I could feel that in my own body.

And very shortly after that I got up to go to a friend's house and spend some time and on my way out the door I got a phone call from a loved one to hear that one of my dear family members had COVID.

And the relationship between the person who called and the person who had COVID was like the closest sisterhood.

They were,

Were and are each other's confidants,

You know.

And so the pain that I felt,

The fear that I felt in this person's voice for what if I lose her,

I can't lose her.

And as I'm driving down the street,

I drive by a woman walking her dog with her air pods in her ears and she's sobbing.

And in this moment there's just such an aliveness of recognition that we all suffer.

We all suffer with different reasons and different stories.

Our histories are different.

Our perceptions aren't the same.

But our human experience of hurting,

Of being in pain,

Of loss and grief,

Of fear,

Of anxiety,

Of sadness,

Of uncertainty,

Of desire,

Of craving,

Of attachment,

All of it,

All of it's human.

It's like this capacity we have to understand each other is right here.

It's right here.

And yet we don't share it with each other.

We don't talk about it.

We shy away when people give us the gift and the opportunity of seeing them in their moments of pain.

The reality is it's because we don't know how to hold our fucking selves when we're hurting,

Right?

How often do we distract or numb or move away or just make our own hurt,

Want to go the fuck away that of course we have no idea when somebody else grants us that moment of being in that space where we can see and understand each other because this is what it means to be human.

Of course we don't know how to hold each other.

And when it comes to relationship,

When we offer ourselves in that way to another human being and they don't know how to hold us,

God it's fucking devastating because all we want is to be held.

And the truth is so many of us are so pained by not being able to hold ourselves.

It feels in this moment like I guess just an offering to say I see you.

I see myself.

I see myself in you.

I see you in me.

There is so much suffering in the world.

Not long ago and hence the reason for the long break in producing these podcasts,

My wife of 10 years and I separated.

It's been about six months and I have never experienced grief as it still flows through me and there is a realness in so many ways to the experience of isolating in our pain,

Of feeling like we're alone,

Like no one can understand.

And my wise,

Incredible grandmother reminded me so many times,

Sweetheart,

Maybe you need to consider that there are so many other people going through exactly what you're going through in this moment.

And at first,

In a way it almost made me angry,

Like no the fuck they're not.

Nobody else gets it.

You know it's almost like there's this indignation around when we hurt this deeply nobody else could possibly understand because it's like what gives it validity if no one can get it,

If it's so big and so painful or my experience,

What happened to me is so unique that of course I don't know how to handle it or process or it's hard,

Right?

Like if so many other people are doing it,

Maybe there's a texture or a current or an undertone of like I should be better at this.

But obviously that's just not the truth,

Right?

I mean if there is so much suffering in the world then I think we all have to agree that it's just hard to know what to do with it.

I think I've learned over the years one of the most beautiful parts of compassion is that we don't need to know somebody else's story to feel compassion for them.

The truth,

The deep reality is we all have a sad story.

Now the sad story isn't the end,

Right?

I just got done reading The Alchemist,

A beautiful book from a beautiful human being and if I could wrap this book up into a very short bow,

It would be that no matter what happens to us,

The good,

The bad,

The joyous,

The painful,

The expected,

The unexpected,

The fucking completely mediocre and mundane,

That all of it becomes our story,

Our history.

What he says in the book is our personal legend,

Right?

And in that way it means that instead of who knows what is for good or bad,

It means that if we take this wider perspective of the whole of our life,

Everything is inherently good.

Not that we feel it is good in the moment,

Right?

But that we become the hero of our own story,

That every single experience and moment of life becomes a heroic moment,

A moment of learning,

Of growing,

Of feeling deeply,

Of beauty even when it's pain.

So I think the truth is that yes,

We all have a sad story but it's not the end of our story.

But in any moment that someone is behaving like an asshole or to put it more kindly,

Behaving in an unskillful way,

That person still wants to be happy.

They're still doing the best they can with all the resources they have in that moment to do better,

To be better,

To feel better,

To be okay.

And the only reason we behave poorly in any moment truly is because we're suffering.

No joyous person is a dick.

So in any moment if we could remember that someone has a sad story,

A sad history,

A hard life,

Difficult experiences,

The truth of our humanity,

Fuck social media out the window,

The lies of the lives that we are all living and see the truth of our humanness connect to one another's suffering.

And it doesn't mean that we fucking linger in it.

It doesn't mean that that becomes what we don our attention toward,

Right?

I'm a firm believer through my own experience that in any given moment we could give our attention to something beautiful or something painful.

We could hold ourselves in our moments of suffering in a way that says,

I love you.

I am here.

It's a softness,

A tenderness.

And we hold ourselves and we hold others in that way that feels like compassion.

It feels like looking at a dog in the humane society and the sadness of their eyes and going,

God,

Let me fucking hold you.

And we hold ourselves that way.

And we look at our life as a long journey of light with moments of darkness,

Not a journey of darkness with sporadic moments of light.

We give our attention to the beauty,

But we're also willing to acknowledge that with the beauty comes pain.

One of my favorite quotes from Khalil Gibran is,

Look again at your sorrow and you'll find that you're weeping for that which has been your delight.

It's only the depth that joy carves us out into our being that we can contain that depth of sorrow and vice versa.

It is the beauty in this life that gives us the contrast and the texture of our pain.

Both are real and true and both are human.

And it connects us,

All of us to each other.

The good,

The bad,

The mediocre and the mundane,

We all live it.

We all experience it.

And I don't know tonight,

I think I was compelled to sit and be here with you and share the reality of our interconnectedness,

Our oneness with one another through our humanity,

Our humanness,

Our joys,

Our suffering.

And to say that for any of you listening,

I see you,

I feel you,

You are worthy,

You are loved and no amount of suffering changes that.

Thank you so much for being here with me tonight.

I look forward to continuing to record now.

A sense of consistency is a beautiful thing.

Until next time,

Dear ones.