What's remarkable is that we make it.

The last few days have been remarkable in so many ways. New York is a city largely shut down, even days after Sandy blew through town. My therapy office has been without power all week, and many areas in the region are underwater, flooded, burned or literally blown away. I've seen New Yorkers waiting in lines for hours to catch buses to work or to fill up their cars with gas. I've seen a Manhattan half blacked-out for days now.

There's been human ugliness: Looting and price gauging.

What I can't get over, though, is how... resilient we all are. What amazes me is that, after sorting through piles of water-logged belongings, or seeing images of neighborhoods destroyed by fire, we have this capacity to continue to go about living our lives.

I see this in therapy all the time

Suffering takes on many forms. There's the suffering of NYC and its neighbors, but also the suffering that brings so many people to therapy. People come through the doors of our therapy center who've been through an awful lot. They bring to therapy their stories of abuse, violence, extreme isolation. They share experiences of war and famine, institutional oppression, abandonment and struggles with drugs and alcohol. They tell of the suffering of their parents and grandparents, passed on to them in myriad, complex ways.

It's not surprising that suffering brings people to therapy. But what astonishes me, literally every time someone sits down across from me in the therapy room and chronicles the history of their pain, is how remarkable it is that they have kept going, that they're still standing. That somehow they've found the strength to move forward and, on the occasion of our meeting, get help.

Help hurts

A trip to the doctor sometimes makes us feel worse for a bit before we can feel better (we get a shot, or an uncomfortable physical exam). So it goes for therapy, too. Most everyone expects this, and yet so many people who live with so much pain sign up to do it anyway.

On human capacities

I'm not surprised by suffering anymore. I've come to accept, reluctantly, that it is a feature of our lives. The world will undoubtedly continue to bring suffering, some of it by nature and some of it (too much of it) at the hands of other people.

We have a remarkable capacity not just to endure but to grow.

(Perhaps this is a friendly reminder.)