In the Spirit: Suffering

Suffering has meaning.

This is a revolutionary idea to most people in our world.  They either think suffering is purposeless and is to be avoided at all costs.  OR they grit and bear it while repeating, "No pain, no gain," and "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," to themselves.

Is there some truth to these sentiments?  Some . . . Pain that we cause ourselves by being too self-centered, by having too much of a sense of entitlement to everything good, or by any other sinful behavior is kinda purposeless.  The good news is that the more we progress in true virtue and the less egotistical we are, the less we will cause ourselves pain.  The stoicism of modern athletics and their kind also has a sort of truth in it.  Suffering helps us to focus on something outside of ourselves that is greater than ourselves.  For instance, health is a greater good than not liking to perform reps of painful leg lifts on all fours that make me look like a dog near a . . . you get the point.  However, that stoicism is mostly useful for suffering we have chosen to bear.  It doesn't work as well for suffering that enters our lives without a proper invitation.  Just think of the person who loses a loved one, bears stoically with a clamped-jaw smile through it all, and realizes much later that they have many emotional issues they have suppressed and not properly worked through.

When real tragedy hits (or when the monotonous grind of daily life starts to produce some emotional friction), the above concepts of suffering leave us empty and questioning the meaning of life.  In a women's ENDOW group I just joined, I read the following passage last night:

...A bit later, I remember, it seemed to me that I would die in the near future.  In this critical situation, however, my concern was different from that of most of my comrades.  Their question was, "Will we survive the camp?  For, if not, all this suffering has no meaning."  The question which beset me was, "Has all this suffering, this dying around us, a meaning?  For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance - as whether one escapes or not - ultimately would not be worth living at all.

A life that suddenly comes up short of our expectations, a life suddenly thrust into unbearable pain that we cannot understand, a life that doesn't seem as "perfect" as we envisioned, a life full of pleasures that never quite fill that aching for something more . . . these are all lives that may end in suicide or hardened cynicism.

What then is the answer?

You'll have to wait for part 2 on the Catholic concept of suffering . . . James just woke up.  :)

Awesome artwork from: http://www.anthonymoman.com/Images/Anguish.jpg