It is very difficult to accept someone else’s suffering and pain since we don’t know why Hashem does what he does. Is it possible that a parent suffers what would or could have otherwise c”v meant to have happened to their child? Is it possible that we pray so hard for our children or the welfare of a parent that we make a deal with Hashem to take on their tzar instead of allowing them to suffer? Are good people suffering as a kaporah for others? This is all possible. Do people suffer in this world so they can have a truly peaceful Olam Habah? That is possible too. Do we watch others suffer to awaken something in us? To make us pull out all the stops, to call us to do real teshuva? To examine our own lives and make changes?
Any and all of these are possible, obviously I don’t have the answers. I do know this, when we see others suffer it changes us. WE can’t possibly be the same. We stop and think, yes we examine fact from fiction, priorities over nonsense, truth from fallacy, good from evil. Black and white somehow develops shades of gray. Somehow it doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong anymore. We bring our values more into focus. We tend to count our blessings instead of whats “missing”. We find compassion where we didn’t know it existed, we find time we didn’t know we had, we do things we didn’t know we were capable of and we “do” just because we can.
We find our own inner strength and we do our best to try to bring it out in the choleh or the less fortunate soul as well. We fight for them and we try our best to make them fight to. We do what we can to lessen their burden, in allowing them to share their pain, to vent their frustrations we actually allow them to unburden a little bit of pain and suffering each and every time. As we allow them to share with us, we lessen the pain and suffering for them. WE do our best to understand that Hashem does what he does for a reason. We don’t know the reason. We are not meant to know the reasons. We are meant to have the emunah and bitachon just to accept that Hashem has a plan for each and every one of us and he tests each of us according to his own plan. It is up to us to do the right thing to pass the test.
The test for that person is the pain and suffering that they are going through. The test for us is what kind of support are we willing to give that person during their pain and suffering.