"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." – Haruki Murakami
There are some things in life that hurt no matter how mindful we are. We lose people we love. Our bodies age. Plans unravel. Grief comes in waves. These are part of being human, what some traditions call necessary suffering. Pain that simply arises as we move through life.
But then there's another kind of suffering. The kind that builds on top of pain. The kind we create without meaning to.
It’s the stories we spin in our heads.
The resistance we carry in our bodies.
The moments we whisper this shouldn’t be happening and tighten up inside.
This is unnecessary suffering. And it’s far more common than we realize.
“The first arrow is the pain. The second arrow is the suffering we add to it.” – Buddhist teaching
The first arrow is the unavoidable part, life’s inevitable challenges, losses, and discomforts. The second arrow is everything we add on top: the inner commentary, the self-blame, the mental spiraling. It's the way we turn pain into identity, or try to control what we cannot accept. Often, we’re not even aware we’re doing it.
Have you ever noticed how quickly the mind jumps in with commentary when something hard happens?
Maybe you feel anxious and your thoughts rush in...
Why am I like this? I should be over this by now. I can’t handle it. Or a relationship ends and instead of just grieving, your mind layers on blame, shame, or looping thoughts of what could’ve been.
This is what it means to suffer unnecessarily. Not because you’re broken or weak, but because your mind is trying to protect you, make sense of the chaos, or stay in control. It’s a habit most of us learned early.
And it’s something we can begin to unlearn.
"You are not the pain you feel. You are the one who can witness it." – Tara Brach
One of the most powerful shifts we can make is learning to be with our pain without becoming it.
This doesn’t mean numbing out or pretending to be okay. It means noticing what’s happening with kindness and letting it move through, instead of getting tangled in the mental web around it.
Through mindfulness, we start to witness our thoughts instead of believing them. We learn to feel emotions in the body rather than spiral into old narratives. We breathe. We pause. We soften into what is, without needing to fix it all right now.
It takes time. It takes practice. And it’s worth every quiet moment we choose to come home to ourselves.
Let’s be honest though...this isn’t a quick fix.
Unhooking from unnecessary suffering is a gradual unwinding. Some days it will feel like peace. Other days, you’ll fall right back into the old loops. That’s okay. That’s part of the path.
Each time you notice, oh, I’m caught in that story again, and gently return to presence you’re building a new way of relating to life.
It’s not about perfection. It’s about remembering that you don’t have to add more pain to your pain.
When we stop resisting what is, something softens. When we witness without judgment, something shifts. And when we begin to trust that we can meet life as it comes, moment by moment, we suffer less.
This isn’t bypassing. This isn’t detachment. It’s a deeper form of love. A way of staying rooted in presence, even when life gets hard.
You don’t have to carry every thought.
You don’t have to believe every painful story.
You can learn to rest in what’s true right now, and let that be enough.
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