Suffering

There is so much suffering in the world that it could stuff a castle and still spill out. No, there's much more than that. And yet there's little that can be done except watch and experience it ourselves. It makes me want to scream and sometimes even cry, but I cannot. I just look around at my broken world and I want to scream at the sight of it.

My grandmother is lying on a hospital bed, sick and hardly able to move. She doesn't even remember how she got there right now, despite how we remind her. She is in physical suffering and has been for quite a while. Her bones ache and her body is frail. Looking at her makes me hurt. I can feel the life draining out of her by the day, wrung out of her by life and by age. The very sight of her hurts.

I just finished reading A Long Way Gone, a book written by a former child soldier. I can't help but think of how horrific it is, how horrific it is that little boys have to fight in a war. I can't believe that there are so many little boys involved in such a terrible things and yet... Ugh. That would be one of the more severe examples of mental suffering. And there's so many people suffering mentally in the world, tortured by things that they should never have to end up experiencing in the first place. No one should have to deal with something like that, much less children.

I'm sick of it and I'm angry. I feel like, wherever I walk, I see broken people. They are people broken down by the horrors of life and of all different kinds. They are broken and so they resort to broken coping mechanisms.

The thing that kills me is how many people are out there. There are hordes- and now there are more and more and more of them with each passing day. There is nothing that we can do to prevent suffering, it seems. The only thing we can do is be there for the suffering but we can't even seem to do that. We're too wrapped up in our own problems.

That's it- that being too wrapped up in our own problems. First of all, we don't realize how lucky we are not to be starving to death or to be in a good, functioning body. But then we're so wrapped up that we needlessly hurt others and we aren't even aware of it.  And then sometimes people hurt others on purpose because they're hurting inside.

It's just not right. Of course it isn't but the injustice of it kills me. I've said this before, but somehow I'm just so shocked by it. I see it every day and stare it right in the eye but it still manages to shock and appall me nonetheless.

Of course, there have been many who have discussed and proposed solutions for it, such as the infamous Buddha. The second truth of Buddhism, for instance, even pinpoints it and pretty much claims that most of our suffering is caused by craving and ignorance. I suppose that it is true, in a way, but it is way too general. I think suffering is caused by people's brokenness continually perpetuating itself. I think that's how evil is spread too- people's brokenness gone sour, morphing into a disease only meant to spread and breed itself.

Suffering is all around us. I'm not sure if there is a way to stop it, really. It just keeps going and going and going. And, even though I too am broken, I must keep going too.