We all experience pain of some sort. A relationship goes south. A government shutdown cuts off your family’s source of income for weeks. The doctor sits you down to give you bad news. Someone you love is depressed, and it’s tearing you apart, because you can’t fix it for them. Or you’re the one who’s depressed, and the meds aren’t working. A complete stranger looked at you with pure hatred and uttered an unforgivable word, because you are [a person of color, gay, homeless…].
I want to make this clear: You have every right to feel your feelings. You aren’t a bad person for suffering. It’s part of the human condition. And if you’ve been taught that it’s wrong to feel sad or angry, I have one bit of advice: Read the Psalms. I believe in a God who created humans with a wide range of emotions. Our emotions aren’t bad; it’s what we do with them that counts.
This post is about what we do with our emotions. It’s perfectly okay to feel them. But if we want to make a difference in the world, we can not only feel our emotions but also transform our pain into something good for someone else.
- Pain can give us empathy. You don’t need to go through a painful situation to feel empathy for others, but it helps. That said, if that pain is in your past, it’s important to keep in mind that your past doesn’t make you an expert in someone’s current situation. My first year out of college, I was poor. I qualified for food stamps, though I didn’t realize that until after the fact. Within a couple of years, I was much more financially secure, but I don’t pretend that because I escaped poverty with relative ease, everyone else can, too. I was raised in an upper-middle class family and could have run home to my parents. And I had lots of advantages that others don’t have, like an expensive college education. I can empathize with people who are struggling to make ends meet and failing, but I’d be a fool if I thought I could “fix” them based on my experience.
- We can reflect on what would have been helpful — or what was actually helpful — and extend that help to others. I’ve written about how I try to bring others freezer meals, because when I was a new mother, it would have made my day if someone had given us a meal. In a similar vein, I remember when I was going through a bit of teenage heartbreak over a boy who asked someone else to prom. My sister went out to dinner with me on prom night, and I had a wonderful time with her. It didn’t completely take away the heartache, but it was a bright spot in a time that felt dark to me. How can I do that for someone else?
- We can channel our feelings into something good. Some great nonprofits have benefited from the dismay many people feel over the current political situation in the United States. Many other people chose to run for office… and won. Places of worship have started asking: What can we do to serve refugees? Outrage, fear, sorrow — it’s okay to feel all of these things, but we also can use those feelings to work toward changing things.
If you’re hurting, doing these things won’t magically fix your pain, though they might ease it. But they are ways to transform your pain into something that can help other hurting people. Since we all suffer, let’s use our suffering to accomplish something good.