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A Reflection on Dancing with Life by Phillip Moffitt

In his book Dancing with Life, author Phillip Moffitt asks the questions “Do you have a

conscious relationship with your suffering? Do you utilize it to enrich your life? Or is it merely

something you try to avoid?” These are broad questions that I think can tend to go unanswered

by the average American. With the constant push and pull of societal duties, it can become easy

to fall into the trap of never taking time to self-reflect and allow for deep insights. While I can’t

confirm my hypothesis without research, I think there is enough evidence that people don’t take

time to think critically and deeply in other examples (e.g. such as the amount of people who vote

on party lines without doing any research). In some ways, I have no doubt that this lack of self-

reflection is at least part of why mental illness seems to be becoming more prevalent, even

within the last ten years. In my humble opinion, in today’s society it is quite easy to get sucked

into the whirlpool of constant motion. If one does not occasionally force themselves to

momentarily take a step back from the whirlpool of constant motion and examine their life

decisions and emotions, they will drown. What are we as a society to become if day-by-day, we

merely follow the norms of society (go to school/work, return home, etc.) and never question the

beliefs that we hold, the emotions that we experience, our position in life, and other abstract

questions?

For Moffitt’s first question, yes, I am aware of my suffering, but I also recognize and

accept it as an element of life. Being able to identify the root cause of negative feelings in one’s

life is just as important as being able to live with them, accepting that they are part of life, and

also being able to identify the positive feelings in one’s life. Using Plato’s Allegory of the Cave,

prisoners in the cave cannot know what objects form the shadows on the wall if the shadows are

all that they see and everything else is darkness. How can one know pleasure without first
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knowing pain? How can one experience warmth without first feeling cold? How can one know

joy without first experiencing suffering? In order to enjoy life to its fullest, one must accept the

duality of reality. In a way there is some beauty in suffering. Suffering is suffering, but suffering

gives life meaning, and without it, life is meaningless.

To know one’s suffering does not mean to succumb to one’s suffering. In fact, it is quite

the opposite. To know one’s suffering is to be freeing. We fear what we do not know, and by

knowing our suffering, we are no longer held down by the fear of it. We can begin to ask

ourselves questions such as “Why do I feel I am suffering?” It is common that we find

unhappiness in our lives is caused by comparing ourselves to others or societal expectations. If

we ask ourselves “Why am I unhappy?,” we might yield something along the lines of “I am

unhappy because I don’t have ____” or “I am unhappy because I wish I could ___.” The issue

becomes when we don’t follow up and then ask, “Why do I want ___?” This approach attempts

to alleviate suffering, but in all truth, it is just a palliative. Sure enough, mitigating one source of

suffering will just replace it with another source. After all, suffering is a fundamental part of

nature/reality. The question becomes “then what are we to do?”

Sometimes, we will encounter suffering that is valid and/or unavoidable. How do we

exist? It is cliché to say that in life there are choices. We can choose to remain bitter and

apathetic about our suffering. Or we can chose to not let it define our life. Meditation can teach

us to observe our suffering from a distant perspective and not react to it. It can teach us to be in

control. To be able to choose not to react is to exert control over one’s emotions; instead of

letting our emotions control us, we become aware. We can use suffering as a tool as well. It can

be used as a motivator tool to help us change ourselves. Suffering is just one part of life; it does

not have to be the only part that we pay attention to.

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Everyone experiences suffering in life. For me, I had two strokes when I was a toddler

and around four or five brain leaks (small brain bleeds) throughout my childhood. So my early-

to-middle childhood required that I work to overcome the speech issues, gross motor skill issues,

and other developmental issues that resulted from the strokes. In addition, I have severe ADHD

and technically fall on the autism spectrum. Through resilience and access to early intervention

services, I managed to go from special education pre-school, to regular kindergarten (albeit with

several hours a week in the special ed room for OT and speech therapy), to ~5 AP classes senior

year of high school and a decent group of friends. It is also worth noting I had moved four times

by age 12 and had lost all four grandparents + grandaunts by age 18. By all accounts, I have

experienced more suffering than a lot of my peers. However, that does not make their suffering

any less invalid. It is pointless to qualify suffering. Suffering is suffering. I do feel, however, that

my experience has uniquely shaped my perspective on life. Overcoming autism required that I be

extremely introspective. Having this skill (and the ability to push away emotion on command

due to the ASD), I am able to think abstractly from multiple perspectives. All of this has caused

me to realize several truths about the world, and for this being the final assignment of the course,

I have decide I would like to share them.

Think not with your eyes, but with your mind. We often make assumptions to fill in the

gaps of what we do not know. However, to quote Plato, “true knowledge is knowing you know

nothing.” In this world, there is so much room for ignorance. People often quote the Christian

Bible and say that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). Yet, from

my perspective, ignorance is the root of all evil. We fear what we do not know or understand.

With that fear, ignorance breeds hate, jealousy, contempt, and other forms of evil.
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It is not easy to do so, but I implore others to step back and imagine things from someone

else’s perspective. We get into this “us versus them” mindset when dealing with deeply

polarizing issues, but the result is that we forget that “they” too are human and fellow man. Close

your eyes and pretend you are one of “them.” Ask yourself “How would I react to me if I were

them?” Ask, don’t make assumptions. Ask them why they feel or think the way they do. Respect

that they can think or feel differently than you. Accept each other’s differences. Find common

ground. Coexist. We are all so different yet all the same. We all live and die on this shared planet

that we call home. We are all so scared. We are all fearless. We are all.