“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
– William Shakespeare
When I rediscovered this quote, my first inclination was to contest Shakespeare. What does he mean, nothing is bad? Just look at the front page of a newspaper. Horrible things happen daily; heartbreak surrounds us. However, when I focused on the latter part, “thinking makes it so,” his message became more clear. It’s not what happens but what we make of what happens. How are we reacting to our own lives? How are we spinning things?Buddhist teachings distinguish pain from suffering, referring to suffering as the “second arrow.” In other words, we can’t escape the first arrow—physical pain from an injury or the emotional pain of loss of, say, a relationship. But are we also stabbing ourselves with a second arrow? Are we adding to our initial pain through obsessive thoughts of what we or someone else “should have” done? Do we pile on anger? Do we add third, fourth and fifth arrows? Or, after grieving, do we shift our thinking toward rebuilding our future?
How can you reduce the effects of “the second arrow” of suffering we tend to add on to our pain?
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