What does it mean that suffering is unavoidable but meaningless suffering is optional?

You cannot prevent all suffering but you can choose how to relate to it.

Example: Elena is a pediatric oncologist who watches children undergo chemotherapy every week. She suffers — not from the disease itself but from witnessing it, from the parents' faces, from knowing that some of these children will not survive. For her first two years in the role, the suffering felt pointless and corrosive. She dreaded every shift, numbed herself with wine after work, and began to question whether she had chosen the wrong career. Then a mentor asked her a question she had never considered: "What is your suffering for?" Elena realized she had been experiencing the pain as random noise — something that happened to her, with no connection to anything she cared about. When she reframed the suffering as the cost of being present for families during the worst chapter of their lives — as evidence that she had not become indifferent to children's pain — the suffering did not decrease, but it changed character entirely. It became a signal that her compassion was still intact, a toll she was willing to pay for work that aligned with her deepest values. The pain was identical. Her relationship to it was transformed.

Try this: Identify a source of suffering in your current life — not a past wound but something you are living through right now. It could be chronic pain, a difficult relationship, career uncertainty, grief, or the weight of a responsibility you did not choose. Write two paragraphs about it. In the first paragraph, describe the suffering as if it is pure noise — pointless, random, something that just happened to you with no connection to anything meaningful. In the second paragraph, describe the same suffering as if it is connected to something you value — a cost you pay for caring, a consequence of having chosen something worth choosing, or information about what matters to you. Do not force a false narrative. If you genuinely cannot find a connection between the suffering and your values, write that honestly. But notice how the act of searching for the connection changes your internal relationship to the pain, even before you find one.