Suffering, Surrender, and the Quiet Path to Peace

Are you happy?

For many, their immediate response will be of course I am! I’d like to pull on that thread a bit, if you’ll stick with me. Repeat the question again, quietly to yourself and then sit with it for a few moments and notice what thoughts begin to arise.

What you’ll notice, I imagine, is that your mind is beginning to wander. Perhaps you are beginning to think of a moment where you weren’t as happy as you would have liked. Perhaps you are feeling some guilt or regret over your actions in the past, either what you did or said, or what you could have done or said but didn’t. Perhaps you are thinking of a time where you had a hand in a relationship souring. Perhaps you’re thinking of that time you yelled at your kid for getting a bad grade, or got upset with your partner for something that they’d said. Perhaps you’re thinking of all the times you became impatient with a stranger, or got upset with how someone was driving. The list goes on.

Now, I’d like to ask that question in a different way: Are you as happy as you think you are? For many, now that you’ve sat with the question, I imagine that your answer to this is no. Why is that?

 If I could describe the previous paragraph in a word, it would be “suffering.” All the ways, small or large, that we rob ourselves of joy in any given moment. We all suffer. Some of us suffer in small ways; others carry suffering that runs so deep, it defines entire chapters of our lives. Our thoughts can torment us. We carry guilt or shame. We replay memories that won’t leave us alone; those quiet regrets that come alive at night and keep us from sleep. In response, we do what we’ve learned to do: we run. We try to escape from our suffering.

Some run toward work, others toward vices. Some bury themselves in constant motion. Some will numb themselves emotionally, trying not to feel anything at all. We put on masks to hide our pain, to look functional or polished; in control. We shapeshift and contort ourselves into different versions in the hope that, by doing so, we will shield ourselves from the ache. But the pain never leaves. The guilt and the fear lingers and simmers just beneath the surface, waiting for a moment of disruption to throw us of so that it may bubble to the surface once more. A moment of rejection, failure, embarrassment, or confusion, and suddenly, the pain is there again. Uninvited, and relentless.

The truth is, we cannot run from our suffering. We cannot escape it by numbing or avoiding it. It may subside for a time, but it always comes back, haunting us. What I’m about to say next will likely feel counterintuitive, but much of our suffering comes not from what happens to us, but from our deep resistance to what happens to us.

What I mean by this is that we try to control our environment, our image, even our emotions. We chase certainty and comfort, thinking these will protect us from pain. But nothing is certain, and we have much less control than we think we do. In fact, we have very little control. We cannot control our environments. We cannot control what other people think of us. We cannot control whether we get in a car accident, or develop an illness, or get fired. We cannot control what other people do, like our partners or our children, like our coworkers or our friends, or complete strangers. Yet, in an attempt to control our suffering, we reach outward in an attempt to control the world around us. Have you noticed, though, that the more we tighten our grip, the more we suffer?

This is because we suffer most when we are trying not to suffer. The resistance to suffering increases it. Resistance, itself, is suffering.

What if the path to freedom isn’t found in resisting or avoiding the pain, but in turning toward it? What if the way out is not running from our demons, but sitting with them and seeing them as they really are? Not as demons, but as hurt versions of our past selves in need of love and grace?

Suffering is part of the human condition, but the freedom from suffering that we long for doesn’t come by escaping our suffering, it comes by embracing it. Not in a masochistic way, or by romanticizing pain, but by turning inward and offering our suffering the space and the presence it never received; by giving ourselves grace to feel hurt, embarrassed, or out of control, and by embracing it, we transcend it.

This is a radical act. Give in to our suffering instead of avoiding it? Yes. And it begins with the simple, quiet choice to stop running and to give yourself the space to breathe. Stop seeking to control, and give yourself over completely to surrender.

When we stop running, we begin to notice. We start to see how our suffering shows up in our behavioral and thought patterns; how we shut down when we’re afraid of being misunderstood, how we snap at our kids when we feel powerless, how we drink or scroll or withdraw when shame creeps in. These aren’t just behaviors. They’re maps. They show us where we’re still in hiding.

Contrary to what one may think, the work is not to fix ourselves. Because the truth is, there is nothing to fix. The idea that we must fix or escape our suffering is a false one. It is an illusion created by our protective walls. It is a lie we tell ourselves. The truth is, the more we resist our pain, the more tightly it binds us. The more we try to run from it, the larger it looms. Suffering doesn't dissolve through avoidance; it dissolves through presence and through courageous, tender honesty. We move beyond suffering by allowing ourselves to feel the very thing we’ve been running from.

This is not easy work. It asks a lot. It asks us to be still when everything in us wants to bolt. It asks us to tell the truth to ourselves when the truth is messy and inconvenient. It asks us to sit in the fire and trust that we won't be burned beyond repair. The solution, then, is to embrace ourselves. The work is to sit with our suffering. To ask: What hurts here? What have I not wanted to feel? Why do I feel the way I do? In what ways does this feeling show up in my relationships or in my behavior? How would life be different if I no longer resisted these feelings?

At first, it may feel like there’s no answer. Just silence. Many stop here, because the silence is deafening, full of the noise our suffering creates. But, if we stay with it, if we stay with ourselves long enough and feel all there is to feel, something begins to shift. The very act of facing our pain, of acknowledging it and making space for it, begins to loosen its grip on us. We stop reacting from old wounds and start responding from a deeper place: truth. We stop trying to force life to go a certain way, start embracing life the way that it is and allowing life to move through us. We stop resisting, and we start surrendering.

I want you to use your imagination for a moment. Imagine yourself sitting on the bank of a river. Imagine the sound of the water as the river gently flows along; the bubbling as it passes over downed branches or a collection of stones. Now imagine seeing a feather appearing in your periphery, gently floating along, and imagine what this feather would feel like if it had the capacity to feel. The feather has no control over where the river takes it. The river could crash the feather into the felled branches, or could turn into rapids along the way, and all the while, the feather doesn’t resist the river. It doesn’t tense up when it hits the rapids. It simply rides. It surrenders to what it cannot control. It surrenders to what is. Even the rapids return to calm, and the feather still rides, as it has been.

When we surrender, we begin to taste something new. Not the fleeting kind of happiness that depends on everything going our way, but a deeper joy that is rooted in freedom. Freedom from the inner war. Freedom from the illusion of control. Freedom from the exhausting effort to keep it all together.

If we wish to escape suffering, this is also what we’re invited to do. To stop bracing against life. To stop resisting what we feel and to allow life to carry us, even in the moments that scare us. Even when we feel lost. The rapids don’t last forever. On the other side of turbulence, there is calm again. And as we sit with the new calm, we notice that we are changed.

This kind of happiness isn't loud. It doesn't announce itself with fireworks. It's quiet. Subtle. But it changes everything, because it's born from a kind of wholeness that no longer needs to pretend.

Practically, the way to begin this work is simply by noticing. Just noticing. When you feel that tightening in your chest, when you snap at your partner, when you feel the need to numb out, pause. Ask yourself, What am I feeling right now? What is this reaction protecting me from having to feel? Not with judgment, but with genuine curiosity.

It looks like sitting with those feelings instead of pushing them away. It looks like finding someone safe to talk to, or journaling honestly, or simply breathing through a wave of emotion instead of stuffing it down. It looks like remembering that suffering is not a sign you’re broken, but an invitation to be with yourself more truthfully. And in our noticing, we begin to see that that silence that was so deafening before is not as loud as we thought it was. We also notice that the silence isn’t empty, it has a presence. A pulse. A rhythm. A quiet wisdom. It’s the voice beneath the noise, the river beneath the mind. To transcend suffering, one must give up trying to control and to surrender to the river.

This is the beginning of inner freedom. Not when everything feels perfect, but when nothing inside us needs to hide. When our sadness can come to the table. When our fear can speak its piece. When we learn to sit with all that we are and say, “You’re safe here. I’m not going anywhere.” From this place, even our most difficult emotions become less frightening. We stop seeing our pain as a threat and start seeing it as a doorway. Our suffering isn’t to be seen as a thing to resist, but as a signal to go deeper within ourselves and an invitation to embrace complete and total surrender. We don’t get there all at once. But each time we turn inward rather than away, each time we respond with compassion instead of judgment, we make a crack in the shell. In that crack, we begin to see the light.

With time, we begin to live differently. We begin to trust the process. Trusting that you don’t have to fix it all at once. Trusting that your feelings won’t swallow you whole. Trusting that, step by step, you can build a new relationship with your pain; one that is rooted in compassion instead of fear. We stop performing. We stop numbing. We show up more whole. We stop needing the world to rearrange itself for our comfort, and instead, we meet life as it is. We become grounded. Honest. Clear. Kind. Not just to others, but to ourselves. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, we begin to taste a peace that was always available, but long hidden.

Because here’s the paradox: the moment we stop trying to escape our suffering, we start to release ourselves from it.

If this stirred something within you, I invite you to sit with it and just notice. Simply notice. Notice what comes up, without resistance, and let it be, just as it is, without resistance. If you’re feeling the weight of your own suffering and you are ready to explore a new relationship with it, you don’t have to do this work alone. If you’re ready to let your guard down, ready to stop resisting and to start surrendering, this is the work that I do. I invite you to connect. No pressure, just an open space to begin.