12 Causes of Self-Induced Suffering
Stanley didn't want a girl with glasses, so he himself wore thick glasses to the day he died. All the suffering of the Freemans was self-induced!
Stanley didn’t want a girl with glasses, so he himself wore thick glasses to the day he died. All the suffering of the Freemans was self-induced!
Twelve common causes of self-induced suffering:
1. Hurting another person’s feelings
Case study, “The Broken Engagement[1]“: Stanley Freeman was introduced to Marla Potter, a lovely girl, both personable and intelligent, from a very similar religious and social background. After a few short dates, Marla accepted Stanley’s proposal of marriage. Joyfully, they informed their parents. The Potters invited the Freemans to a traditional toast, and together with the young couple, the engagement became official.
At the time of their engagement, America was in the midst of a postwar economic recession. Marla Potter’s father, a welder, had been laid off his job at the shipyards because of a severe federal cutback in shipbuilding. The Potters couldn’t afford a fancy engagement party at a hotel or ballroom, so they opted to have it at home. Marla Potter, her mother, and her aunts worked for a solid week preparing an array of ethnic delicacies for the engagement buffet. The engagement was scheduled for Wednesday night, June 7, at eight p.m.
Richard Freeman, Stanley’s older brother, a sailor in the Navy at the time, received a four-day furlough and flew home on Tuesday afternoon, the day before the engagement. That evening, he accompanied Stanley to Marla’s house. Mr. Potter, a navy veteran himself, occupied Richard with sailor scuttlebutt. The womenfolk were busy cooking and baking for the morrow, and the entire house smelled like a Lithuanian bakery. Marla Potter served the men beer, kielbasa sausage, and fresh bread hot from the oven, and then returned to the kitchen to help her mother and her aunts.
Stanley and Richard came home after what seemed to be a delightful evening at Marla’s house. Their parents were waiting up for them, eager to hear Richard’s impression of his future sister-in-law.
Richard asked his parents cynically, “Mom, Pop, when did your eyesight begin failing? Why didn’t you write me? I would have mailed you my paycheck so you could get proper eye care.”
“What are you talking about, Richard? Our eyesight is fine,” they answered.
Richard yelled so loud that he almost shattered the wine glasses in the living room buffet: “THEN WHAT IN THE HECK ARE YOU LETTING STANLEY BRING SOME FOUR-EYED PIZZA FACE INTO THIS FAMILY! SHE’S THE HOMLIEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN! YOUR GRANDCHILDREN WILL LOOK LIKE CHIMPANZEES WITH HORN-RIMMED SPECS!”
Stanley buried his face in his hands. Richard swayed his mother and his two teenage sisters.
“Richard’s got a good point”, said the mother.
“Yeh, don’t go through with the engagement,” chimed the sisters, “Richard’s right. She’s an ugly duckling. Stanley, don’t give us an ape-looking sister-in-law. We’re a family, not a city zoo!”
Mr. Freeman protested, “What about family honor? We never go back on our word.”
“C’mon, Pop”, sneered Richard, “this is Jersey City, not Vilna!”
For the next eighteen hours, doubt gnawed at Stanley’s heart. Richard wouldn’t let up. “Stanley, are you that hard up that you have to marry a four-eyed hatchet face? Man, her specs are thicker than a beer glass! You won’t be able to show your face in public. People will be asking, what’s wrong with Stanley Freeman? Why’d he settle for some wilting wallflower? You’re gonna have to move to the Saudi Arabia, where they make women walk around with covered faces!”
Stanley’s defenses crumbled. At seven-thirty p.m. the following evening, he informed his family that he can’t bring himself to marry a girl with thick eyeglasses. The family argued for an hour. The father protested vehemently, but Richard, the mother, and the sisters were on Stanley’s side. The father was overruled.
Richard declared victoriously, “I’m treating everybody to a consolation celebration of wine and pasta at the Napoli. Let’s go!”
The father refused to participate. “Somebody’s got to be decent enough to inform the other side. Go dine at the Napoli if you all want. I’m going to meet Mr. Potter. It’s a matter of honor.”
* * *
By eight thirty, Marla Potter’s house was packed. All the relatives and guests had arrived, except for the groom and his family.
Eight forty five – Stanley and the Freeman family were still nowhere in sight.
Nine o’clock – Marla’s heart told her that something was drastically amiss. An uncontrollable tear trickled down her cheek. She told her mother and father that she felt weak, and that she was going upstairs to lie down for a while. A heavy sense of humiliation felt like a ton of concrete on her chest, and she could barely breathe.
At nine fifteen, the doorbell rang. Mr. Freeman stood ashen-faced on the front doorstep. Mr. Potter opened the door, took one look at his prospective in-law’s fallen countenance, and knew that the engagement was off. Potter stepped outside, beyond earshot of the relatives and guests, and closed the door behind him. “What’s going on? My Marla’s sick with embarrassment. Where’s Stanley?”
Freeman couldn’t control the flow of tears. He stuttered, and then poured his heart out: “In the old country, a word was a word. My son has broken his word. He has shamed our family name. I have no control over him. I’m so ashamed. I beg your forgiveness.”
Potter answered calmly, “Don’t worry, Mr. Freeman; I believe in God, not in violence. I’m not going to shoot you, and I’m not going seek revenge for the disgrace to my daughter. The good Lord obviously doesn’t want this match to take place, and I trust His Divine judgment. I suggest you do some hard praying for your family. They need it. Good night.”
Potter stepped back inside the house and closed the door. He looked at the guests, and then at the tables piled high with delicacies. He spent his last dime buying new clothes for the family. Days of planning and preparation, not to mention the money, had gone down the drain. All that remained was a sick feeling of humiliation. “The engagement’s off,” he declared.
* * *
I suggest you do some hard praying for your family. The words echoed again and again in Mr. Freeman’s ears as he morosely walked home. The family had not yet returned from the restaurant. He opened the front door, turned on the hall light, and removed his hat and coat. I suggest you do some hard praying for your family. Those haunting words wouldn’t stop. He plugged in the coffee pot, and the phone rang.
“Hello, I’d like to speak with Mr. Irwin Freeman,” the voice requested.
“What can I do for you?”
“This is County General Hospital speaking. Your family’s been in a car accident. Please come over right away.”
Richard and Stanley Freeman drank too much wine with dinner. On the way home from the restaurant, Richard, driving the family car, swerved instantaneously to the opposite lane, directly in the path of a heavy truck. The truck smashed the driver’s side.
Richard was killed on the spot. The two sisters’ faces were lacerated to a bloody mess. Despite subsequent years of repeated plastic surgery, their faces remained scarred and frightening. Neither of the two ever married. The mother spent the next four years in a wheelchair, until she died of a bitter, broken heart.
Stanley was catapulted out of the front windshield. Miraculously, his life was spared; his broken shoulder and broken hip healed eventually, but his concussion left him with permanently damaged vision. Stanley, who humiliated Marla because of her glasses, ended up wearing thick glasses and suffering from terrible headaches and blurry vision until the day he died thirty years later.
Marla wasn’t heartbroken for long. She met a successful optometrist, and married six months later. Her new husband fitted her with contact lenses, which were new at the time, making her a very attractive woman. Thirty-two years later, she’s a mother of five with more than a dozen grandchildren, happily married, and content. The Almighty gave her a much finer husband than Stanley Freeman.
Moral of the case: Notice the underlying currents of ATFAT in the above case. Richard Freeman ruined a young lady’s life (at the time), so he lost his own life. The two sisters called Marla ugly, and contributed to ruining the engagement, so they became ugly and never had an engagement. Stanley didn’t want a girl with glasses, so he himself wore thick glasses to the day he died. All the suffering of the Freemans was self-induced!
To be continued…
(The Trail to Tranquility is available in the Breslev Store.)
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[1] This is an actual case that the author heard from a member of the “Freeman” family; the names and certain details are changed for obvious reasons.
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