So much misery, so little time | Salon Books.

“Suffering,” he writes, “is as common as death, and like death, it resists all attempts to explain it.”

Peter Trachtenberg took a tour around the world in his quest to understand why some people are crushed by suffering and others are transformed by it.

I know a thing or two about suffering. Maybe not as much as some, but don’t we all suffer equally, regardless of ther reason? No, my losses aren’t as great as the losses of the man who lived through Auschwitz, or the people who lost everything in Katrina (or Andrew or any severe weather or reason), or the twins with the skin disease. Are they any less though?

I’ve had a life of loss, but if I try very hard and flip it around, I’ve been given some powerful gifts as well. I’m compassionate, I’m thoughtful of others, I don’t see differences between people… often. I’m sure there is more. I am a better person for my suffering. I am stronger. I am smarter. I am a lot of things.

I also have less. I am missing important people, things, accomplishments, milestones and events. Much like our Holocaust survivors, I watched members of my family waste away in sickness and die. I’ve buried my mother and my sister. I’ve stepped up to fill in her place, as best I can.

Suffering… what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger? One foot in front of the other. I live my life by that mantra. I always have, and I suspect, always will. Disaster will always strike, but good times are always just around the corner.

I want to pick up this book. It fascinates me. Maybe I just need to know that everyone else is just as miserable as I am. Maybe my Zaide is right, if we all hung our troubles up at the end of the day, and could pick new ones to take home, we’d still take our own. We know them, we understand them, and we have learned what to do with them. Someone else’s troubles frighten us because they are foreign. I’ll keep my troubles, my suffering, because I know what to do with it, and I know good times are coming.