There is a story about a person who was struck by a stray arrow. They felt immediate pain from the iron tip piercing their flesh. Still in the moment of pain, their mind began to run wild with thoughts: "Will they have to amputate this leg if I don't get it treated in time?" and "What if this leaves a scar for the remainder of my life?" Many thoughts slowly flooded through the person's mind, all of which focused on the negative and frustrating side of things. The storyteller refers to this as "the second arrow"; a metaphysical arrow that caused emotional suffering in that person.

My own interpretation of this is that even though I do belive that we all suffer from a lot of "second arrow" pain, we can't all just be pure stoics in life. I think being aware that in this metaphoric story, even though someone else fired that arrow at us, it is ourselves that shoots the second arrow at ourselves. We don't have control over many things in life, both the good and the bad. However, we do have the ability to control or acknowledge that which we do have control over. Hopefully understanding this will greatly reduce uneccessary suffering in our lives.

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References

• Pain is Inevitable, But Suffering is Optional on Youtube by Dhrama Stories
• Check out Two-arrows paradigm (Sallatha Sutta) a discussion about two arrows in buddist scripture.