Imagine meeting someone born without the ability to see. Do you wonder what caused their blindness? Or someone born with a disability — what caused this? Did their parents do something wrong? In these moments, we search for a cause, trying to understand what went wrong.
Often, as parents, we wonder what we could have done differently to prevent our children from making choices that don’t lead to flourishing. And children often hold their parents’ upbringing against them. Looking for a cause, searching for a place to lay blame.
Did we do things perfectly? Honestly, no. Hindsight teaches us that regret does not change outcomes. Instead, its greatest power is encouraging us to learn from our mistakes and change our current attitudes and actions.
What if we changed how we saw suffering? It is too easy to dismiss a bad situation as “their own fault,” releasing ourselves from any responsibility. Or we see the situation as overwhelming and excuse ourselves, saying our drop in the bucket won’t make any difference. Even though drops fill buckets.
There is another way to see suffering: as a call to action. We can ask ourselves, “How can I respond — without judgement or blame, but with compassion and care?” Instead of focusing on solving a problem, we can respond to suffering as an opportunity to serve.
What if hard circumstances revealed not the truth of the other person, but our own hearts?
