The way we spin it and why we shouldn’t
April 2026
I love a “suffering that brings redemption” story. Maybe it is the Catholic upbringing. I love nothing more than reading about someone who has gone “through it” (whatever “it” is) and comes out the other side stronger, more loving, more merciful, more forgiving, more them – again whatever that is.
Oh and if they are genuinely grateful for the experience and wouldn’t change a thing: Perfect. Tell me more about how to always make pain into something desirable.
I’ve been trained really well. Even though I know that pain for redemption is not always the truth and likely doing us harm.
It’s the story we want though – isn’t it? People’s difficult childhoods, multiple traumatic events, life threatening and changing illnesses, disabilities…we want to know that it has meaning. Even if it doesn’t make sense to us, if the person can say that it has meaning for them, we feel better about it all. And then we justify how awful things made people “better.”
If you were to look at it, minus the stories, we are fed: can you really say that losing loved ones, traumatic events, natural disasters, etc. make a person or a life better? Really? Really really? Can we really say that?
There is a concept called worthless suffering that I read – link HERE – about while I was all up in my Catholic phase about 10 years ago. And it struck me enough to keep it and write about it almost 10 years later.
The author talks about worthless suffering. I’m not a fan. It sounds like people made it worthless, that it was a choice. Not all suffering is a choice. And who is anyone to decide that any suffering is worthless? Sounds more like hitting someone when they are down.
I prefer the term NEEDLESS Suffering. I don’t take the same stance as the author for a resolution to this sort of suffering. At least not anymore.
You can spin anything into a more positive story. Sometimes you have to just keep surviving and going until you can shed more light on it – maybe you will see it as something that was good in the current light. Maybe you will see it for something else, what it really is, a justification for belittling and denying with a whole culture behind it.
Many of the things we do and say to children are of this vein. Suck it up. Deal with it. Touch and be with the person that makes your skin crawl. Take treatment from people who dislike you but call it love and don’t get mad about it.
Sure, our kids (and most adults) have to learn that things don’t always go our way and we still have to get along.
Except I have found much of those phrases usually cross a fine line between a personal preference and setting someone up to be abused. In my memories, I am shocked at behavior that I accepted and welcomed, thinking it was normal and “suffering that will make me a better person.”
This started in childhood and got worse as a young adult. Love was never saying a word and accepting people and their actions no matter what they did to me. Maybe it made me stronger but I should have never had to have those experiences in the first place. And mine is minor to the horrors I hear about regularly.
So much of this was never about helping people get along and accept others’ preferences. It was abuse and control, plain and simple. NEEDLESS, unnecessary Suffering. That I brought and embraced myself throughout my lifetime.
Through the example of all the others and the world around me.
How often are we told “it’s the way it is” “you just have to accept it” and “you’ll be better off for it” while those who claim to care are the ones violating ourselves and our dignity in so many different ways?
That is needless suffering. And it is endemic in our societies and has been for thousands of years.
But we explain it away. We spin it, position it, to make it through. We might have no other way to survive.
Because that’s the only thing you actually need to do with needless suffering. It doesn’t need to be a positive story or get redeemed and integrated to make you a better person, it just needs to be survived.
Putting a positive spin on all things helps enable, sustain and justify it all. “This hurts me more than it hurts you.” “It’s for your own good.”
No.
WRONG.
Not only do we hurt others in the name of love but we also invalidate them and violate them on a whole other level.
It is why we are where we are. Trying to fix and heal a system that thrives on brokenness. And on healing only in positive terms that allows for others to continue abuse and control. It’s a difficult cycle that is even harder to see – it is easier sometimes just to spin it and stuff it down to move on. But it doesn’t stop the madness.
There is much that is needless. I don’t take away the gory, horrifying realities of it (even if it is also redeeming in the end). We could wake up from this needless suffering if we could stop “positive washing” it.
I’m struggling to do it. I want to call it for what it is and have the strength to keep doing so.