Restriction to Suffering?

I just spent a few days in the south of Argentina. Nice weather, beautiful lakes, great mountains and some fishing expeditions, but overall a nice environment and a lot of friends.

One of them was my dearest friend Marcelo Serantes, who has always encouraged me to talk openly about my ordeal. One evening I found myself surrounded by his friends and their children talking about my mountain experience.

In these conversations, many issues arose. One was about the “restriction to sufferings”. I cannot say that being expose to 40° below zero, is 10 or 40 times worse than being expose to just zero. I cannot say that we felt much more hunger, pain or loneliness than any one exposed to an extreme situation in our ordinary lives. I am convinced that we have a limit to sufferings and there is only so much pain a human being can bear. I just can’t remember the sufferings in the mountain, I blocked them away, and time and life have also done their job. In fact, the worst sensation of cold I remember is the cold I felt on a skiing trip with my children. I don’t remember the 40° below zero we had in the mountains 35 years ago! You can’t go on with your memories and open wounds; they necessarily must be healed and forgotten.

The other side of that coin, is probably that we also have a limit to happiness. If there is only so much pain we can bear, there must be also so much happiness that we can enjoy. Is it then that happiness and sorrow are only relative measures?