An Essence of Suffering

The experience of life holds so many joys and so many adventures. The anticipation which builds before a new experience; attending university, attempting an epic bike trip, or traveling to a new part of the world (close or far) for example. All of these events have three stages the first which I have already mentioned, anticipation. I like to think of anticipation as the nervous excitement we feel as we contemplate what the adventure will hold, the nervousness is sometimes accompanied by a small amount of stress as we wonder how the whole ordeal will turn out.

The second stage is the experience itself, the real deal, the culmination of all preparation and planning however short they were!

The third stage is the memories which the event has sowed in our minds. We look back and laugh or simply muse, replaying pieces of the event in our minds, perhaps unintentionally changing certain details so as to mature the experience into an idyllic memory. I often do this with my bike adventures. There are times in many of my trips where I alone, or my friends and I certainly were ‘suffering’ up a seemingly endless hill, or seriously contemplating how many revolutions our legs had left, or hoping for our tires to hold out just a few more miles. However these details get shaded in the memory process of the experience, for the better I think.

At certain times, maybe inevitably, there is a fourth stage to an experience. This is the stage of longing and wishing. It could simply be human nature to long for familiar places and comfortable environments, but however futile this aspect of our nature is; we cannot deny its power. If only we could be back in the experience feeling the same pains, pleasures, speaking the forgotten words of that day. Re-living the joy. But as we all know, this is impossible. In short, this is an essence of our suffering.