When Affliction Reveals Its Emptiness

On the Shattering of the Self That Tried to Survive Through Suffering

“Truly every man living is vanity.”

Psalm 38:6–7 (Grail)

There comes a moment when a man realizes that even his suffering cannot hold him together.

He thought it could.

He thought the pain gave him weight. He thought the wound gave him substance. He thought the affliction proved that he existed, that he mattered, that something real was happening inside him.

He thought his suffering was solid.

But the psalmist says it is not.

“Truly every man living is vanity.”

Not only his pleasures. Not only his successes. Even his afflictions.

Vanity.

Vapor.

Breath that appears for a moment in the cold air and disappears without leaving a trace.

The man does not accept this easily. He clings to his suffering because it is the last evidence of himself. He has lost certainty. He has lost strength. He has lost clarity. But he still has his pain. And so he holds onto it as proof that he exists.

He says this is mine. This is real. This cannot be taken from me.

But even this begins to dissolve.

He discovers that suffering does not stabilize him. It does not secure him. It does not preserve him. It exposes him.

It exposes how fragile he is.

It exposes how little he possesses.

It exposes that the self he thought was enduring is passing away like smoke.

St. Isaac the Syrian says that this life is like a man writing letters on water. He writes carefully. He presses deeply. But the surface does not retain the mark. It closes over itself. The effort disappears.

So it is with the man who tries to build himself upon his affliction.

He suffers. He struggles. He tries to define himself through what he has endured. But time erases everything. Memory fades. The body weakens. The intensity drains away. What once felt absolute becomes distant, almost unreal.

And the man is left with nothing.

This is the terror that the psalm reveals.

Even suffering cannot save you.

Even suffering cannot preserve you.

Even suffering cannot make you real.

The ego feeds on affliction. It draws strength from injury. It builds identity around abandonment, rejection, failure, humiliation. It says I am the one who has suffered. I am the one who has endured. I am the one who has been wounded.

But this self is vanity.

Because it is still centered on itself.

It is still trying to survive.

It is still trying to exist apart from God.

Abba Poemen said, “If a man understands that he is nothing, he will have rest everywhere.”

This is not poetry. It is the description of a death.

The man who sees that even his suffering is vanity stops trying to preserve himself through it.

He stops rehearsing his wounds.

He stops using affliction as a mirror.

He stops trying to prove his existence.

Because he sees that nothing he possesses can sustain him.

Everything he can point to is passing away.

Everything he can cling to dissolves in his hands.

This realization feels like annihilation.

The ground disappears beneath him.

He can no longer locate himself in anything that belongs to him.

His strength fails.

His clarity fails.

Even his suffering fails.

He stands exposed before God without substance, without defense, without identity.

And yet he does not disappear.

This is the mystery.

He does not disappear because his existence was never sustained by his suffering.

It was sustained by God.

St. Silouan says, “The soul that has come to know its own weakness rests entirely in the mercy of God.”

When the illusion of solidity collapses, the man discovers that he was never held together by his strength, or his understanding, or even his endurance.

He was held together by the One who created him.

Affliction is vanity because it cannot destroy what God sustains.

It can strip away illusions.

It can dismantle false foundations.

It can expose the fragility of the ego.

But it cannot touch the life that comes from God.

Archimandrite Sophrony says that blessed is the man who sees his own nothingness, because in that moment he begins to live by the life of Another.

He stops trying to exist by himself.

He stops trying to justify himself.

He stops trying to preserve himself.

He stands empty.

And God fills what remains.

This is why the saints do not fear affliction.

They know it cannot take anything real from them.

It can only take what was never real to begin with.

It can only take the illusion of independence.

It can only take the self that tried to exist apart from God.

“Truly every man living is vanity.”

The psalm does not say this to crush the man.

It says this to free him.

Because when he finally sees that he is vapor, he stops trying to preserve the vapor.

He stops clinging to what cannot endure.

He turns toward the only One who is not vanity.

He turns toward the only One who does not pass away.

He turns toward the only One who can say

“I AM.”

And there, in that place where everything else has dissolved, the man who has nothing left finally discovers the life that cannot be taken from him.

Not because he possesses it.

But because he is possessed by God.