A matter of perception.

"If he's weak in the knees, let him not call the hill steep"

H. Thoreau

This is one of my favorite quotes - because it opens up for the possibility of growing stronger and understanding that while pain may be inevitable in life, suffering is optional. Life does not have to be one long treadmill where you eventually pass out from exhaustion; life does not have to hurt to the point of you needing sedatives.
You choose how long the blood flows from the cuts, that you get in life. We all get cuts in life - some self-inflicted and some brought on by others. Some of us choose to bleed to death, some of us choose to wrap a bandage around it and move on quickly, and yet some choose to cut even deeper, mesmerized by the vivid red streams that flow - what I call "the addiction to misery".

If you choose to let the blood flow to the point of you becoming a weakling; the hill is not steep, rather you have chosen to become weak. And that is a fact. There is more evidence in history of humans who have undergone and grown stronger from what seems like utterly inhumane conditions, than I have time to go through in this blog post. And it goes to show, that it is our mind which is the most difficult thing to overcome in life - it is the stories we tell ourselves, it is the legislations of why our self-destructive actions are OK.... even though we deep inside know they are hurting us. And that is why we typically respond to change with anger and resentment - because the truth hurts. It hurts to be told that we just need to take responsibility and step up to the plate. It hurts in the moment to accept and realize that all the suffering, we thought we had no control over. All the years of whining and complaining over others, well, it really boils down to just one person. And that is you. You change. And everything else does as well. Simple.

The longer you permit yourself to hurt and down-spiral in your misery, the further you step away from growing and being happy in the skin you are in. Happiness is not some abstract utopia. However, it is only attainable once we take responsibility for our actions in life, and realize that we, in fact, have the power to change the way we perceive and thereby deal with whatever obstacles we encounter in life. Nothing is impossible. It is a mindset. And the ability to change your mind is the most important factor of whether you will make it in this life or not - the ability to be flexible and listen, rather than just engage in a one-way monologue screaming tantrum on why your life is tough, and what you want/need/are entitled to and yadayadayada.

What we must understand as humans is that it is a choice each one of us makes, and thereby our answers to life's obstacles are never objective - what destroys one person, will be the very same thing that accelerates change and power from within another.

There is no suffering worse than other. Because suffering exits in the mind, it doesn't matter where it stems from - it really doesn't. There is, however, always a way out. When you are ready the path unfolds. But the first step out of darkness is always a leap into the unknown before light takes over.

One of the core truths in life is, there is none (manmade anyway...). Once we accept this, and that we, in fact, create our own destiny, and even though we may not like the cards we've been dealt, we can choose how to play them and thereby change the outcome of life... for better or worse.