Pain is Real
…but suffering is an imaginary land.
Isn’t this just too easy to say
right here and right now,
in the relative comfort
of this present moment?
Morning is when
all of my needs and wants,
all of my fears and anxieties,
are just smoldering fires,
not yet stoked by the critical mind
or the fuel that comes
from living life too fast and furious,
and too far into the future.
I haven’t even mentioned the suffering of others.
How can their suffering become real to me
if I cannot see my own suffering
for what it truly is?
Though pain is real,
suffering occupies that space
some might call imaginary -
between what is real
and all that is desired.
“Let yourself be open and life will be easier.”
“Suffering is the space between what I want and what is real.”
This poem was written on January 26, 2022.
