Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.
—Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (H/T–Andrew Sullivan)
Live your hurt
It’s where you are
It’s riding shotgun
In your car
Live your hurt
Day by day
You can’t pretend
Your hurt away
Love your hurt
And pay respect
To the way
That we connect
Stare at hurt
Like a mirror
You’ll never see
Your conscience clearer
Praise your hurt
With every breath
The only other
Choice is death
by Richard W. Bray
Tags: Andrew Sullivan, pain, Poetry, Saint Augustine, Thomas Merton
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