One of the deals we made simply by being born is that we will experience unwanted moments at different times throughout our life.

There will be unwanted feelings. We cannot control others' actions or much of the world's events,

and some of the people in this world and some of the world events will cause us pain.

We cannot avoid this reality, And these are examples of how difficulty,

also known as pain, enters our life. We cannot avoid pain, but we can't avoid or reduce suffering.

How we choose to engage with the pain that arrives in our lives will determine

whether we prolong the difficult feelings or not. In Buddhism, the teaching of the four noble truths

teaches us how to effectively engage with suffering that arises. And when it does, unbeknownst to us at the time, we can then

explore constructively how we played a role in bringing it about by engaging with it in a way that

prolonged the inevitable pain. But we can choose to engage differently. And that is the gift of suffering. It teaches us,

should we choose to be the student, how to engage differently to avoid suffering moving forward,

to learn to choose differently, and as a result, liberate ourselves and find an abiding peace in our

everydays. The first noble truth is to acknowledge that suffering is happening, some sort of

stress and unwanted feeling of any kind or deep emotional distress. The second truth encourages

us to objectively explore what is causing the suffering,

because suffering doesn't arise without a reason.

The third truth is to determine how to seize the suffering,

and there is an answer to be found here if we are honest with ourselves.

Finally, the fourth noble truth is what we discover as the way to

engage with ourselves, with others, the world, in a way that avoids suffering. Yes, we acknowledge

that pain will happen, but then we take responsibility for how to best engage with that pain

to ensure we no longer cause suffering moving forward.

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