Love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is only your aversion to it that hurts, nothing else.
Interpretation
Embrace your suffering instead of avoiding it, as avoidance causes more pain than the suffering itself.
Hermann Hesse encourages us to accept and love our suffering rather than resisting it. He suggests that the real pain comes not from the suffering itself, but from our aversion to it; by accepting suffering, we free ourselves from the additional hurt that comes from fighting against it.
In practice
During a motivational speech on resilience, you can use this quote to illustrate the importance of accepting difficulties.
I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time.
That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged β to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious, innate harmony.
I, also, would like to look and smile, sit and walk like that, so free, so worthy, so restrained, so candid, so childlike and mysterious. A man only looks and walks like that when he has conquered his Self. I also will conquer my Self.
You're quite right there," he said. "I have practiced abstinence myself for years, and had my time of fasting, too, but now I find myself once more beneath the sign of Aquarius, a dark and humid constellation.
I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength, desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself.
Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding, and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side.
Others may try to feed our ego, but it is up to us to constrain it.
One of the hardest expressions of self-assertiveness is challenging your limiting beliefs.
It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have.
The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.
And I know now that all the time I was trying to get out of the dust, the fact is, what I am, I am because of the dust. And what I am is good enough. Even for me.
It's amazing how easily people are led to fury and chaos. Unhappy people with guns are not going to make this country great.
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