Use the Vision Behind your Eyes to See the Blessings in Your “Suffering”

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. –Helen Keller

What do you perceive during times of sadness and misfortune? Can you find the blessings in your suffering? The blessings are always there.  When you spot them, ask yourself, “Is this really suffering, then?”

Terah Duncan Stearns says that “Every experience is like a mirror for you.” That’s so true!  It’s just a matter of your perspective. If you use the vision behind your eyes, you will see the blessing of the “contrasts” that pop up against the perception of your happiness. As a woman without sight or sound in her life, Helen Keller apparently knew all about that kind of vision.

My sisters has been living with this truth daily. Once a collegiate athlete, she has now lost her ability to walk. She relies on a motorized wheelchair and handicap transportation services to get her around. She regularly receives treatments in a 4-week cycle at the hospital. It’s kind of like dialysis – she plugs into a machine which delivers life-giving fluids. Is this suffering? Yes, from one point of view, it is. However, these treatments improve the quality of her life and play a part in overcoming her suffering overall. Without the treatments she can’t swallow, she can’t hold a pen or write… she can’t perform basic bodily functions that most of us take for granted.  She also has super-enhanced compassion and empathy for those who live with similar challenges.

She is determined to complete her education because she plans to become a specialist in the nursing field and make her contribution to humankind, not realizing just how much she already contributes by being a light in the darkness, by being the example of perseverance to those she encounters in her life’s journey. She shows me that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.