I've been thinking about this- and I think we all have to suffer whether we like it or not. Suffering is an objective experience but i think it is all part of the game. The question I have is how to make the best of these experiences? Is it only after you've been through the suffering that you become enlightened? Got any thoughts on this subject.
Isn't suffering our reaction to the objective experience? Come to realize that suffering is short-lived/temporary and you will come to find that it is almost as if it is an illusion, although a very albeist one. Some people suffer too much, some people suffer too little, some none at all. In a way, suffering may make you stronger, it may make you weaker, but in the end it makes you who you are. Our suffering in certain circumstances can change if we change our frame of mind toward it.
Since opposites need each other in existence to function it doesn't suprise me that suffering would eventually empower oneself.