Free Essay. Journal Suffering

Every one of us must go through suffering at some point in life; it is part of life. One of the most recent events that proved to me that suffering is real is when I saw my friend go into depression. My friend goes by the name, Ann. She is in her mid-thirties. She recently got divorced from a marriage that she terms as the best marriage she could ever have asked for. She claims that her husband was the love of her life, and the fact that they divorced does not mean that she had fallen out of love with her husband. Ann says that her marriage was just doing fine, two years before, they were just happy, raising their two daughters, and watching them grow older. One day Ann brought home one of her friends, she met the family, and she interacted with the family, both the husband and the kids. They all clicked from the word go, and female friends continued visiting Ann at home during the weekends and day-offs. After some time, Ann's friends grew apart and claimed that she was busy at work. It was until one year ago that Ann discovered that her husband was having an affair with her very own friend. That is the moment the depression began. Ann could not imagine sharing her husband, she became angry, she was frustrated with the marriage, the husband had changed, and he was no longer the same man that Ann knew.

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Ann was utterly in love with her husband, so this was a situation that brought a lot of heartbreak to her. She was in her thirties, she had two kids to worry about, and she could not imagine taking care of the kids as a single mother. The husband had promised her a whole life together, where she would never have to worry about the future of the children. She was shocked about the discoveries that could change her entire fate; there was a chance that she would end up being a single mother, there was a chance that her beloved husband would marry another person, she was no longer in her mid-twenties when men would follow and bow to her, she had so many questions that needed answering. When still in this confusion, six months later, the husband came and hit her with divorce papers, all she had to do was sign them, and they were done, just like that, and he was free to go and be with the betrayer. The continuous stress may have caused the depression.

Was the suffering physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual or a combination? The suffering was a combination of psychological, emotional, and spiritual causes. How was the suffering psychological? Given the fact that the suffering caused stress and depression, it means that it was mental. We can see Ann, getting stressed because of thinking again and again about her life, about the life and marriage that she has just lost. She is in trauma. Depression comes in because she cannot stop thinking about her situation. She is a mother of two, divorced, out of shape, given that she is no longer in her twenties, she is worried about so much in life, such that she is getting depressed. How is suffering emotional? Ann is experiencing marital problems; they must be very sensitive to her. Given the fact that she is losing her husband, the love of her life to her friend, the fact that Ann is losing her marriage through betrayal from her friend means that the situation is very emotional for her. The emotions are making the situation to be psychological because there are so many unresolved things. How is the condition spiritual? There are so many spiritual factors when it comes to Ann's situation. One thing is that she has a lot of anger and lack of forgiveness. This is a factor that puts her in a dark position, this is the cause of her depression, the fact that she cannot forgive her friend for destroying her marriage, the fact that she cannot forgive her husband for cheating on her, and possibly destroying her life. Marriage is also a spiritual institution; a lot of spirituality is necessary for a marriage to succeed.

What events led to her suffering? What was the cause? The instability in her marriage mainly caused the depression. Apart from that, the fact that she had so much anger, so much lack of forgiveness, she kept so many thoughts and emotions inside, she overthought about the whole situation, such factors might have accelerated her depression. Divorce alone would not have affected her to the point of depression; her response to the collapse of the marriage might have had a more significant effect. Was the suffering a result of sinful human choices, natural causes, or a combination? The pain was mainly caused by sinful rational choices. It was not her fault that the husband cheated on her, but the sinful nature of the husband led to the collapse of the marriage. It is also clear that her female friend was never interested in their friendship; she was only interested in the husband (Zoloth, 2014, p. 82). So she was quite sinful, and to some extent, their sinful natures destroyed the marriage, which led Ann to go into depression. The fact that Ann could not forgive also shows that sinful nature can cause suffering because a lack of forgiveness is sin.

References

Zoloth, L. (2014). Suffering: Suffering and Bioethics, 275-295.