Suffering is the sister of your future possibility. Suffering can open a window in the closed wall of your life and allow you to glimpse the new pastures of creativity on which you are called to walk and wander. But this window often opens only when the suffering begins to recede. While you are going through the dark valley, it is almost impossible to understand what is happening to you. The light that suffering brings is always a gift that it leaves as it departs. While you are in pain, you can see and understand nothing. The flame of suffering burns away our certainties; it also burns out the falsity within us. Each of us lives with a certain set of illusions that are very dear to us. We use these illusions as consoling lenses through which we view the world. An illusion is always a false lens; it can never show us the truth or reality of a situation. Suffering cleanses us of the falsities that have accumulated in our hearts. So often our minds are like magpies. We pick up and take on everything that glitters, even though it may have no substance. In a magpie’s nest, one finds random collections of colourful but useless debris. The fire of suffering cleanses completely the falsities to which our longing has attached itself. This liberates us from the emptiness of false belonging and allows us to belong in a real and truthful way in our lives again. Truth is difficult to reach and endure, but it is always the doorway to new freedom and life. As Shakespeare says in Othello, “This sorrow’s heavenly / It strikes where it doth love.”