“It is better to suffer and do good than to take pleasure in doing evil…..”
Maybe, but it is definitely not easier. I attended mass one recent Saturday evening with friends. The priest, who was 1week away from official priesthood, spoke those words. We all suffer differently. Choosing a healthy snack over a pile of Oreos- suffering? Perhaps. I doubt this is what the author of the quote had in mind. Surely, what was meant by suffering involved a noble account of mental and/or physical pain in which the alternative would cause the sufferer to do evil.
Doesn’t everyone have a cross to bear, something in life which must be suffered? I suppose some people’s crosses are more visible than others’. The (near) priest also spoke of having hope and that hope is the thing which allows a person to suffer and survive. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived Nazi concentration camps, observed the very same phenomenon. The people who had hope and believed themselves to have purpose, were the people who survived the longest in the camps.
Purpose. I’ve known for years that my purpose in life was to help those who cannot help themselves, to be a voice for the wordless. But what of my patients’ purpose? What is the purpose of the suffering of babies? This thought I had while watching my writhing patient last week, his eyes wide and frantic as he struggled simply to get oxygen to his damaged lungs, dependent on a machine that enables him to live while it slowly kills him. Fleetingly, I felt at a loss in my purpose. I was helpless to help. No touch, no quiet, no darkness calmed him. He suffered on, a veteran of the NICU, even through heavy sedation. Finally, mercifully, he succumbed to the added medication and slept. Thanks be to God, he slept! (Because, I hoped, when he sleeps, he does not suffer.) He left me mentally exhausted, emotionally drained. NICU nurses must participate in a cruel paradox of events: to soothe and promote healing while inflicting pain.
As I go forth in today’s world, I may not suffer the likes of persecution or starvation, but if faced with suffering in choosing to do good, I pray my faith is strong and that I continue to believe in the purpose that my life holds. And when my emotions are spent, and I’ve seemingly nothing left to offer my patients, may I remember that, always, there is hope and, most certainly, there is prayer.
NICU with a View 
I love this, Mel. I struggle to feel a sense of purpose, also. It seems strange, doesn’t it? To most people on the outside, our work seems to be overflowing with meaning and purpose. It is hard for me to see that sometimes, though. It does seem that there are so many days in which nothing we do seems to matter. I just finished a great book, and the last page concerns the main character being told by his father that he would waste his life trying to do good and fight the evil of human nature, that his life “amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean.” And the son replies, “Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?” This is a concept that gives me some peace. Though my life and the acts I perform are a minuscule part of a massive eternal story, they just might be essential…..one of the multitude of drops that make up the ocean…..so I have to keep trying and move forward.
Beth, I couldn’t have said it better. It’s difficult to describe being a caregiver in the NICU because the experience is so complex. And it’s those who share the experience with us that best understand the futility we feel sometimes in caring for our patients. The emotional toll it takes is easier to bear when someone else truly understands. I’m so glad that we are drops in the same ocean.:)