I came to Buddhism out of pain. I hoped it might offer a way out of the daily thrum of dissatisfaction and into something like happiness — or at least the assurance that everything would eventually be all right.

It didn’t.

Buddhism, as it turns out, was unflinching. It said that everything and everyone you love, including your own life, is impermanent, and that we live in a world that can’t reliably satisfy. I appreciated the honesty.

What Buddhism doesn’t promise is the end of pain. What it points to instead is the possibility that pain need not always become suffering. Even the Buddha, tradition reminds us, lived with chronic back pain.

Still, I dived in with hope. I believed that practice might lead to attainments: stream-entry, awakening, the wisdom and bliss that seemed possible if I devoted myself fully to the path. And eventually enlightenment, whatever that might be.

But the practice refused to unfold as I had expected. Happiness didn’t arrive. The jhanas — those otherworldly states described in books — didn’t appear. My attention remained a dutiful wanderer. Years passed. The thought maybe I’m doing this wrong arose. Maybe I’m wasting my time.

I eventually let go of those hopes at a moment when serious practice no longer seemed possible. I don’t mistake this choice for completion. It’s a trade I’m willing to live with, for now. Letting go brought a clarity of its own. It also brought heartache.

Then, a year ago, I found myself in the Intensive Care Unit. My heart was racing uncontrollably. No one knew why yet. I didn’t know if I would make it home to see my children again. The machines beside me hummed and pinged, indifferent to the person they were connected to.

Fear arose. And yet panic didn’t take over. Attention returned to the breath, to sensations in the body, to the simple fact of being there, moment by moment. Calm appeared. It didn’t erase fear, but it kept fear from growing.

Only later did I recognise that something had shifted over the years, so slowly I’d barely noticed. I used to be hot-tempered, easily flustered, and impatient. That’s not how people tend to describe me now. It wasn’t a breakthrough I experienced as it happened, but something I recognised only in hindsight. A slow erosion.

There were places the practice didn’t reach. Meditation didn’t lift me out of depression, no matter how hard I tried. Therapy did. This taught me something important: Buddhism didn’t have to carry everything.

What it did teach me was to see suffering less as a personal failure than as the result of causes and conditions — not as an excuse, but as a way of loosening blame and extending kindness, toward myself and others.

Over time, that understanding shaped my actions. The precepts (training rules kept imperfectly but repeatedly returned to) kept me from justifying harm in the name of selfish pleasure. Restraint didn’t make me virtuous. It gave me fewer excuses.

I’m not sure I would have learned these things elsewhere. Buddhism doesn’t protect me, or the people I love, from time, illness, or death. It doesn’t resolve every tension. What it offers instead is a way to stand my ground when the ground falls away: not turning aside when things don’t go my way, paying with presence, being kind where I can, and doing the least harm where I cannot.

That’s why I’m a Buddhist.