We all have our own pekele to carry, as they say. Often this is followed by the assertion that no one would trade theirs in for another’s.
On a certain level, that can’t be true. It would seem strange and insensitive to suggest to Häftlinge of Auschwitz who lost their entire families that they should not wish to trade in their suffering for something a little more pedestrian.
Yet, the idea is not without its merits, as our suffering is often tied up in the things and the people that we love and cherish above all else. When a loved one passes, we don’t wish we could trade them for someone else, even if an illness took them from us in a horrible way or much too soon. Only because we cannot isolate pain from pleasure, love, and meaning is it true that we would not trade away our suffering.
This is the difficult bargain of life: all good things come with their terrible downsides. As the Rambam says, one of the primary causes of suffering is simply that we are physical beings, doomed to decay. Painful and true. And though we may wish we could trade away our pain, we would not trade away the love, identity, and meaning from which much of that pain arises.