You will suffer. Accept it.
You and I probably spend a lot of effort in avoiding and alleviating suffering. But what if we accept it instead?
Even professional fighters feel fear. UFC champion Georges St-Pierre had this to say on accepting fear:
When I was young, I thought that nervousness and fear would disappear over time. But I realized that not only does it not disappear, it gets even worse. The only thing that changed is, now I accept it. I know it’s going to be there. I know how to deal with it. Now, with experience, I know I’m gonna be scared when the fight is coming; I know I’m not going to sleep well the week of the fight, but I accept it. [Early on in my career] I would freak out, sleeping only four hours the night before a fight. I put more pressure on myself, because I thought I wouldn’t be able to perform my best because of lack of sleep. But now I know it’s normal. I accept it. It’s a suffering process that I have to go through before a fight. But it’s still as bad as it was; the only difference is that I accept it now.
Moving over to a different field, Singer Rihanna accepts that she will always feel anxious before she performs and manages it with a ritual, which she shared in an Esquire interview:
Jen, my personal assistant slash bartender, brings me a shot that she dilutes with a little something […] I have to have it. I take it very seriously, so there is a level of anxiety, always… The drink calms my nerves. I sip it while I watch the opening act from my dressing room.
But perhaps suffering can be seen as more than an inevitability. What if instead we could see it as an opportunity ? I don’t mean this in any masochistic sense. I’m just being curious about it. For instance, take this quote of psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross:
Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.