God will never waste our pain—provided we don’t waste it by feeling sorry for ourselves or feeling angry with God.
Pain is one of life’s inescapable realities. When pain comes upon us suddenly and apparently for no reason, it can leave us feeling so afflicted that we become incapable of doing the things we were normally doing. We may start lamenting that our life is being wasted due to this pain.
Thankfully, the wisdom of the Bhagavad-gita offers us a more life-affirming vision of our pain. The Gita explains that Krishna is always in charge of whatever happens in this world, including our life (9.10), and that he, being our ultimate well-wisher (5.29), can bring good even out of the bad. This means he won’t waste our pain. He can use our pain to help us learn and grow, to help us find deeper meaning and greater purpose in life. Pain can also draw us closer to him and mold us so that we can be of greater service to him and to others facing similar pain. Indeed, there are many ways in which God, in his infinite wisdom, can use our pain.
Just as fire, when applied to gold, can make it shine brighter, similarly, the fire of tribulation can refine us. The Bhagavad-gita points to this dynamic when it states that many of life’s best joys begin in ways that are initially painful. Or put more poetically: what eventually turns out to be nectar often tastes like poison at first (18.37).
Unfortunately, while God wants to use our pain for greater good and does not want to waste it, we may waste that pain through two unhealthy mental tendencies. These can keep us perpetually stuck in the “poison” phase, denying ourselves the opportunity to graduate to the “nectar” phase. These two tendencies are feeling sorry for ourselves and feeling angry with God.
When we feel sorry for ourselves, we become consumed with self-pity. Our thoughts get so caught up in how terrible our situation is that we have no mental bandwidth left to consider any good that might be emerging from it. By getting absorbed in ourselves, we effectively shut God out, even if unintentionally. Bhagavad-gita 18.35 cautions against self-destructive determination where we hold on to the very things that perpetuate and aggravate our misery.
One way to stop feeling sorry for ourselves is to consider that, while our suffering may be great, there are many others throughout the world, and certainly throughout history, who have suffered far more. Rather than catastrophizing our suffering, if we contextualize it in the broader plight of humanity—and indeed in the context of the overall nature of the world as a place of distress (8.15)—we won’t feel so terribly singled out. And if we contemplate how others have grown through even greater suffering than ours and emerged on the other side better for it, we can feel inspired to make the best of our situation rather than lamenting how terrible it is.
The second mentality that obstructs us from benefiting from our pain is feeling angry with God. We may feel anger toward him either because he brought that pain upon us or because he didn’t stop that pain from coming upon us.
Such anger is understandable, and God’s love for us is large enough to accommodate it, just as a mother’s love for her baby is large enough to accommodate the baby kicking her. Still, just as a baby grows up and starts appreciating the mother’s care—like when the mother gave bitter medicine while the baby was small—similarly, we need to grow up in our relationship with God. That relationship is too important to leave it at the mercy of our anger.
If we seek an explanation from God for what has happened and why it has happened to us, we may be left answerless and resentful for the rest of our lives. But instead of seeking an explanation, if we seek “energization” from God—praying to him and opening our heart to receive strength not just to go through the pain but to grow through the pain—slowly but surely, we will find positive energy seeping into our heart. We’ll find hope where there was previously only despair, light where there was darkness, and opportunity where we saw only adversity.
If we keep taking small steps to move in a positive direction, we will gradually be taken to a better place by God’s inconceivable guidance. As he promises in the Bhagavad-gita 18.58, we will pass over all obstacles by his grace.
Summary:
- Pain is unavoidable and can frequently seem pointless, but God can use our pain to usher us into a life of deeper meaning and greater purpose and to ultimately draw us closer to his embrace of love.
- To let God use our pain and ensure we don’t waste it, we need to stop feeling sorry for ourselves, which we can do by considering how others have suffered even more than us and emerged stronger through their pain.
- Even if we feel anger toward God, we can try to outgrow that anger by seeking energization from God instead of an explanation, finding hope where there was despair, and letting God guide us to a better life through our pain.
Think it over:
- How can God use our pain?
- Do you feel sorry for yourself about any current problem you are facing? How can you overcome that mentality?
- Do you feel angry with God about something? How can you outgrow that anger?
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18.35 And that determination which cannot go beyond dreaming, fearfulness, lamentation, moroseness and illusion – such unintelligent determination, O son of Pṛthā, is in the mode of darkness.
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