Suffering calls forth our own brokenness, and allows us to learn through contact that the most we can hope to do is to live deliberately, to be as fully present to ourselves as is possible and to try to be available to others in the process. Being present to someone, I’ve learned, means you make room for that person in yourself, that you don’t refuse yourself to them but are instead willing to surrender your self-separateness, and in doing so let go of the attempt to control existence and accept the mystery of being alive in each moment.