Necessary and Unnecessary Suffering

Suffering is part of being human.
No life unfolds without loss, limitation, or pain.

Yet not all suffering is the same.

Some suffering belongs to the conditions of existence itself: illness, aging, grief, separation, uncertainty, vulnerability.
This kind of suffering cannot be eliminated.
It is woven into the fabric of life.

Other suffering arises from how we meet those conditions: resistance, avoidance, fear, shame, or inherited patterns of defense.
This suffering is not inevitable.
It grows from the ways we struggle against reality rather than inhabit it.

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, “No mud, no lotus.”
He was pointing to a simple but profound truth: suffering itself is not the obstacle to awakening; it is often the ground from which it grows.

Necessary suffering is what life asks of us simply because we are alive.
It includes loss, change, disappointment, and the limits of control.
It is the pain of loving in a world where nothing remains fixed.

Unnecessary suffering is what we add:
the refusal to feel,
the insistence that life be other than it is,
the stories that magnify shame or fear,
the defenses that isolate us from connection.

Much of human healing involves learning to differentiate these two.

When necessary suffering is resisted, it often becomes unnecessary suffering.
Grief resisted becomes bitterness.
Fear resisted becomes anxiety.
Loss resisted becomes despair.

Yet when necessary suffering is met with presence, something different unfolds.
It can soften identity, open compassion, and deepen contact with life.

Richard Rohr writes that “pain that is not transformed is transmitted.”
When suffering is avoided or denied, it tends to reappear through patterns, relationships, or inner conflict.
When it is faced and integrated, it can become wisdom.

This does not romanticize pain.
It recognizes that suffering honestly met can transform rather than only wound.

Transformation does not eliminate suffering.
It changes our relationship to it.

As unnecessary suffering loosens, necessary suffering becomes more bearable and often more meaningful.
We discover that pain and love are intertwined: to care is to risk loss, to live is to change.

From a contemplative viewpoint, the path is not toward a painless life.
It is toward a truthful one.

A life in which suffering is neither denied nor multiplied,
but met with awareness, compassion, and participation.