“We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full,” says Marcel Proust, the French novelist. Suffering is so intrinsically a part of the human predicament, that each one of us experiences it in some form or the other. Yet, suffering is necessary to understand the value of life with its mix of joys and sorrows. Suffering takes you beyond yourself and allows you to understand yourself and others better. It is a cleansing process, an introspection that makes you recognise the beautiful ordinariness of everyday things and the abundance of simple pleasures which we fail to acknowledge during happier times.
When suffering ensues from the loss of a dear one, it can be excruciating and admittedly genuine grief has no closure. The pain of loss is intense and heartbreaking because in loving deeply, we connect with another human being and grief is the reflection of the connection that has been lost.
But it is also important to stay connected to grief, to accept it as important in your life. Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says on the loss of her father, “How is it the world keeps going, breathing in and out, unchanged, while in my soul there is a permanent scattering?”
And then is the understanding that "Grief was the celebration of love. Those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved.”
It is a way of honouring the dead and accepting the inevitability and ultimate disposition of destiny. All of life’s beauty belongs to death. At any moment it may come to an end. This recognition that suffering is integral to your life and you are not alone in suffering is emancipation. It is like the Sun breaking through masses of clouds painting the horizon red with rays of hope.
Stephen Hawking, the wheelchair-bound genius who in spite of his condition, has achieved so much, has this to say: "One, remember to look up at the stars, not at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose, and life is empty without it."