The purpose of suffering

      I'll start this month's entry by posing a question: Why do we suffer? This is a term that everyone has some familiarity with and it's something most people try to avoid at all costs. When one experiences suffering they are baffled to why it's occurring and wants it to end abruptly. If you pay attention there is always hidden lessons amongst all the chaos.
      My mentor always told me; "The harder you are on yourself the easier life will be on you." We need to embrace suffering at times and pay attention to what it's revealing in ourselves. If everything in our lives we always great there would never be a need to grow as a person. Hardship gives us the ignition to create change or to wake us up to all the good things we've been missing. You rarely understand the purpose while going through the torment, but I can't remember any point in my life where I endured suffering that I didn't come out better on the other side.
    We as human beings need that dichotomy to exist to keep us striving forward and to keep us humble. These difficult experiences draws us closer to: our creator, our loved ones, and reveals to us what's important in life.  We need to get our asses handed to us on occasion, so that we can never say: "we have it all figured out."