Suffering is optional

Hello High Heelers

I sincerely hope you are all well, as we creep into the South African winter we’re all ending up with a little cold here and a nasty flu there. Many of you High Heelers who haven’t been this far south of the globe, can’t imagine how cold it gets. Really! Ok, so not as cold as England, and certainly nowhere near as cold as our Russian and Canadian readers’ experience. But it gets cold. Ok? Argh! Who am I kidding? It doesn’t get ALL that cold. But we feel it, we really do.

In fact it’s still autumn (or fall) here and it’s around 12 degrees at night and the dry season hasn’t hit with full force yet. As the chill sets into the city of Joburg, the people get a little quieter, a little unfriendlier and we start to whinge and moan. In fact, I could very well be the leader of the ‘winter blues’ team. I walk right ahead of the pack with my ‘I am cold and therefore GRUMPY’ sign held high and I let the world know that I will not smile to spring has sprung and the flowers are sprouting their fragrance across this city again.

The Buddhists (who I can relate to at the moment in the sense that I’m beginning to resemble their god!) have a wonderful proverb that states ‘pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.’ When it comes to suffering, my goodness, I kick some ass! I can (and have) complained people out of jobs. I can take suffering to a whole new emotion type. As a little writer/need-to-be-heard person, I’ve been quite proud of this in the past… until now.

Why? Well, Natalie Maroun recently had her tonsils out. Now, you may or may not know that when you have your tonsils out and you’re any older than 12, you’re going to go through some extraordinarily horrendous pain. Not, ‘ooh, I have a sore throat’ pain, but ‘yikes my throat feels like it’s been split into pieces and salt is constantly rubbed on it’ kind of pain. I’m really not exaggerating! That’s how it feels, because that’s kind of what’s happened.

So as I sit complaining about the chill down my spine from the open window behind me, I receive email after email from Natalie. Is she in extreme pain? YES. Does she complain? NO! That’s because Nats knows that a positive attitude and patience are all a girl really needs (along with a pair of hot heels) to pull through the pain. She lets us know when she’s feeling a little tired and sore and she rests as she needs to (though not enough – if you ask me!)

You know, the worst kind of suffering, in my opinion, is the emotional kind. An old friend of mine had a friend (see how this is a friend of a friend scenario!) who had an ex-fiancée who had moved on and married someone else. Though she had ended the relationship she was still completely in love with him – to the point that she was suffering. Years of dinner parties passed where we had to hear about him constantly (i.e. we were suffering too!) You’d go for pizza and have to hear about how ex-fiancée loved pizza. You’d strategically change the topic to sexy stilettos and she’d then pipe up about how ex-fiancée had bought her a pair that she wears still and sheds a tear when she sees them. Argh! I wanted to throttle her sometimes. Pain is fair enough, it’s the beginning, the raw stuff that’s healing. It’s allowed. But when you choose to suffer and it is a waste of time, energy, life and opportunities. Just don’t do it!

The truth is that life is just tough. Summer turns to winter, love turns to hurt, youth becomes aged, excitement turns to shattered expectations and tonsils hurt like hell when you have them removed! The important thing is to keep firmly on your feet and allow the pain to pass. If you feed it and cling to it, it will turn into suffering.

So stand tall, stand free of suffering, kick away your troubles and be a high stepping High Heeler this week. Have an awesome one!

Cheers,
Jo