It just dawned on me that suffering is the regret of missing out on life. It’s the pain of remembering that there were better times and you didn’t see them. Suffering is a mindset. Agony is when the suffering is so intense that it physically manifests as excruciating pain.
I feel like suffering has a lot to do with karma and the way you lived your life. There’s innocent suffering, where you don’t know how you got here but you’re willing to do whatever you need to be at peace. This suffering is pure. It’s the suffering of the sexually abused, the physically abused, and the children in cages.
Then there’s the suffering that causes agony. Agony is brutal and vicious. It’s intense because you have a knowing of how you got here. The pain is so deep because you feel like you deserve every bit of what is being inflicted upon you. It’s the suffering of the guilty.
But all suffering is a mindset.