The wisdom of suffering

 

The world is full of suffering. A glance at any newspaper can testify to this fact and usually arouses a sentiment of melancholy with many examples of life’s misery. Even the most cheerful kind of person may have scores of reason to be unhappy on any single day.

 

For the sake of living well, however, it is worth questioning to what extent suffering can be avoided in a person’s life. As far as physical pain is concerned, the answer may be rather obvious: to the extent that any bodily harm can be avoided, or sickness prevented; but failing which, to the extent that any associated pain or, more precisely, the biological sense of it, can be subdued by medication or any other means. Alternatively, afflictions of the mind – anxiety, frustration, fear, anger, jealousy and all the other forms of mental suffering – may be less readily avoided, no doubt depending on, amongst many other things, the character of the individual concerned.

 

If suffering is more or less a fact, does it offer any merits and, more importantly, is there any way we can choose to suffer so as to benefit from these merits – if not possibly enjoying suffering itself? 

 

Marcel Proust, the French novelist, believed so; and Alain de Botton, the contemporary Swiss writer and philosopher, wittily elucidates on Proust's thinking in his enlightening work How Proust Can Change Your Life