The Power of Adversity

I’ve been sitting with a strange question lately:

What if suffering isn't a punishment for what we're doing wrong, but the proof that something real is unfolding within us?

It’s not an easy thought to hold. Suffering is something we’re taught to avoid, fix, or overcome. For me, I thought if I lived with enough care—if I worked hard enough, gave enough, loved enough—I’d somehow earn my way out of it. But no matter how much good I tried to do, suffering has been relentless. If anything, it sharpens its edges the more I lean into life. But you keep going—through the ache, through the quiet fear that it will always be there—until, for a moment, it's gone. Life is beautiful. You feel stronger. More confident. But then something even harder arrives, and the cycle repeats.

I’ve wondered about that pattern. I’ve sat with it, analysed it, tried to trace it back to its root. And after countless experiences—after the ache kept returning—I was left with the same unanswered question:

Was I just becoming better at suffering? Or was something else happening beneath it all?

Pain arrives in many forms. Sometimes it’s sharp and immediate—the kind you can name: a loss, a disappointment, a betrayal. But other times, it’s quieter—a dull ache beneath the surface of a perfectly good day. For years, I mistook that ache as a sign that something was wrong. I tried filling it with action, with purpose, with good intentions. I thought if I could just get it right—be kinder, work harder, give more—the ache would dissolve. But it never did. The more I pursued goodness as a goal, the more elusive it became. And in its place, an invisible dance with suffering kept me on my feet.Maybe suffering isn’t a verdict on who we are. Maybe it isn’t about what we’ve done or haven’t done. Maybe suffering is the tension between where we are and where we're meant to grow.

And when I sit with that thought long enough, suffering begins to make sense.

There’s a hidden war inside each of us. A quiet, relentless conflict between what feels comfortable and what’s necessary for growth. Comfort whispers: Stay here. You’ve done enough. Life is fine as it is. But suffering… suffering doesn’t let you settle. It presses on the parts of you that haven’t yet stretched. It introduces friction where things once felt smooth. And if you pay close enough attention, you start to notice that suffering isn't random. It’s deliberate. It shows up precisely where you’d rather it didn’t—in the places where growth is possible but not yet realised.

Recently, I’ve noticed an increase in people being upset with me. People I love. People I care for deeply and hold in my highest intentions. I knew I’d done everything I could to handle these situations with integrity. I wasn’t careless or dismissive. I showed up. I tried. And yet, there I was—face-to-face with their hurt and my own rising sense of justification. My mind raced to defend itself: But I did everything right!

But beneath that noise, a new question finally stirred.What if doing it right was never the point? What if the ache isn't a punishment at all, but an invitation—a way of pulling me beyond myself, beyond my own sense of rightness, toward something I can’t fully grasp from where I’m standing?

That thought sat heavy in me.

Because if it's not about getting it right, then what is it about? If suffering isn’t here to measure or judge me, what is it trying to show me?

And then, slowly, I saw it.

The ache wasn’t pointing to the past—to mistakes or missteps. It was pointing forward. It was pulling me toward the part of me that still needed to stretch, to soften, to make room for something more than my own understanding.

And here's the paradox that still humbles me: The more I tried to be "good" to avoid suffering, the more disconnected I became. Because that version of goodness was still about me—about my sense of rightness, my need to feel like I was doing life correctly. But suffering kept breaking that apart. Not as a punishment, but as a persistent reminder that love and connection don't live in the polished spaces of right and wrong.

They live in the raw, uncomfortable, often painful stretch of showing up for each other without knowing how it will go.

So now, when suffering shows up, I try not to resist it like I used to. I don’t welcome it—I'm not that enlightened. But I do meet it differently. Instead of asking, What did I do wrong? I ask:

What is this ache asking me to see? What part of me is being asked to stretch? Where is the resistance—and what would happen if I let it go?

Because we aren’t deserving of love because we've earned it through our good deeds. We are deserving of love because we've suffered enough to need it. And life, I’ve found, responds to that need. Not all at once. Not without struggle. But when the ache becomes real enough—when the suffering stops being a problem to fix and starts becoming the ground we walk upon with humility—something shifts. The weight lightens. The heart softens. The world, without changing at all, feels more connected.

Suffering isn’t a sign of failure. It's the space where growth takes root. Not because we've earned it, but because the ache itself reveals the place where life is ready to move through us.

Bradley J Cleary