On Suffering
After reading “Should This Be the Last Generation” on the New York Times philosophy blog, and then “A Crack in the Stoic’s Armor” from the same, it struck me that our society really sucks at suffering. We miss the point entirely.
The summary of our view of suffering is so short that it feels like I’m making a straw man of it, but I don’t think I am: suffering is bad, and it should be avoided. Our idea of a happy life is one without suffering, and our ideal society is one where nobody suffers. It’s hard to even think where to begin with it.
But is suffering really a bad thing? I suspect that it might not be, in a way.
Exercise hurts, doesn’t it? Especially when you’re out of shape, and you do something that you know fit people should do, like run 15km or lift something really heavy or bike up a huge hill. Not only does it hurt to do, it hurts for days after, and you can even injure yourself. This is why, when you’re starting to exercise, it’s important to learn to exercise properly. You warm up, you don’t overexert yourself, you learn the proper form. In cycling, for example, you learn to pedal from the ball of your foot, to keep your knees in line with your leg and ride a bike that fits. Not only is this more efficient, it reduces the strain on your joints and feet. If you just start cycling hard on a poorly sized bike and with bad pedaling form, you’re likely to injure yourself, and it’ll take ages to recover. Yoga is another good example: bridge pose can wreck your lower back, the plow can hurt your neck, headstands can do both, and let’s not even talk about something like Dwi Pada Sirsasana. So you learn to watch your body, and know the difference between stretching and overextending.
Of course, we all know that exercise is good for you when you do it right. At the end of all of that discomfort, you come out with more powerful muscles, better flexibility, a stronger heart, more efficient lungs, and so on.
I propose a definition: suffering is the sensation of spiritual exertion.
Most of us have had the opportunity to meet someone who has suffered a lot and come out of it with a presence. They are probably not very loud—they might not say much at all—but they somehow fill the room. You get the impression that on some level, they see right through you. It’s almost unnerving. You could say that these people have suffered well. On the other side, we probably know people who, under the weight of their suffering, have turned into brittle, neurotic shells of people. You could say that they haven’t suffered well; that they’ve injured themselves.
We can’t avoid suffering. Just like we can’t live without using our bodies, we can’t live without using our spirit. No matter what, there will always be a box to lift or a flight of stairs to climb. Likewise, there will always be heartache and disappointment. We already know that if we don’t want to experience physical discomfort in our everyday lives, we need to keep our bodies at a fitness level that can handle those boxes and stairs without undue discomfort. But we don’t seem to accept that for the spirit.
Of course, when it comes to spiritual exercise, there are a few obvious problems. Mainly, we don’t know what we’re doing, or what we’re straining, or how we can hurt ourselves. In fact, I don’t think we consciously control anything that we do, spiritually. We do seem to see a cycle, where people repeat painful patterns until they see them and understand them, and then something opens up and they move on, to get caught in something more subtle. This process of opening and increasing subtlety makes me think that spiritual exercise looks something like yoga.
When you do yoga properly, your mind is engaged in a specific way. You aren’t focused on achievement, you’re just watching. You watch your position. You watch your breathing. You watch your muscles and your joints, and where they are tight or where they strain. You go into everything fully, but only as far as you feel you can. You accept your limitations and keep going, and you open up.
And so it follows that the way to suffer is with that same watchful awareness and acceptance. You go into everything fully, but only as far as you feel you can. You accept your limitations and keep going, and you open up.
