Life can be challenging. It would be great if it weren’t, but no matter how many labor-saving devices we use, how much money we earn, or how lucky we are, there is no escaping how difficult it can be to be alive.
We read in history books about what our ancestors had to endure. How could people have survived the hardships of the Middle Ages? Their plagues, lack of food, economic instability, and wars make our problems seem small by comparison. Can suffering obliterate our ability to make sense of it, like staring into a bright light and then not being able to see appropriately afterward?
The pain an Olympic athlete experiences to achieve the required level of performance is incredible. Could we stand Olympic training for even a single day? And the unbelievable demands of a doctor’s internship after medical school, the lack of sleep, the long hours, and the requirement to learn the progression of disease and healing in real time over days and weeks, is it beyond our endurance? Yet thousands of doctors go through this trial before embarking on their careers every year, just as thousands of potential Olympic athletes endure years of hard training to achieve their goals. What enables us to tolerate suffering in some situations and yet, in other equally tricky situations, we can’t stand it for a moment?
We expect our lives to be meaningful and essential. What we can’t stand is meaningless suffering. Meaningless suffering in severe situations like the unexpected death of someone close to us, or even mundane problems like being stuck in traffic or having COVID-19 more than once can cause us grief.
We hear so much about how life is too difficult for young people, that mental illness is increasing, and there is increased demand for mental health services. Not to trivialize the actual mental health issues that undoubtedly exist, but what if one of the overall problems young people face was a lack of meaning in their lives?
Olympic athletes and new doctors get up every morning to face unrelenting suffering, but, at the same time, there is a payoff for their sacrifices. What if young people see no gain and then, discouraged, embrace a view of life that does not allow for success or meaning? A vicious cycle can begin that goes like this: no purpose/no energy/no success/even less sense/even less energy/not even thinking of being successful.
One mistake we all make is trying to avoid what therapists call legitimate suffering. Legitimate suffering is unavoidable. The death of someone close to us is often inevitable. Being stuck in traffic, what can you do about it? If you took every precaution to avoid Covid, you can do nothing once you get it. Legitimate suffering. It’s not on you, it’s just life.
This avoidance of legitimate suffering can lead to a worse problems. We can start to believe that we are being picked on and that life is out to get us when things go wrong. Or, because we don’t succeed at something important to us, we start believing that life is pointless.
How we deal with suffering is crucial to our ability to live. It comes down to what we believe. If you think you can’t endure something, a door gets shut. Now there is a certainty, when before you were only dealing with what might happen.
We like dealing with certainties. It gives us a sense of control. But suffering shows us that much in life is beyond our control. This simple truth can be as hard to endure as suffering itself.
What if there was something more you could do to deal with suffering? Something that few people talk about, advice that can be given that you won’t read about in the mainstream media. What if an explanation exists for everything in our lives, and we are guaranteed a chance at a happy ending no matter what we face? You don’t have to believe what I am about to write. Just try it on like a new pair of shoes. The decision to buy or not can be made later.
Life was supposed to be perfect. But something went wrong, and life went sideways and became random and pointless. We supposedly evolved in a random world, so we shouldn’t have any idea that something better than a random existence might exist, but no matter, almost to torment us, we are condemned to know that life should be perfect as a kind of shared racial memory. So, we try to create the ideal lives we were meant to live, but the fragile, perfect lives we do create, making plans, loving, and being loved take place against a dark backdrop: we also grow old, get sick, lose friends and relatives, suffer, and die. This is the life the richest, happiest, luckiest person alive can hope to live.
Is there any point in writing that life is pointless? Is it meaningful to say that life is meaningless? There was a man who lived a tragic life. This man’s name is Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus tried to teach people a better way to live, but he was killed for going against what most people believed. In essence, he taught us that if we followed the teachings of the church he founded, we could live forever with God in heaven. So, physical death happens, but the life to come can make up for anything we experience in this life.
Interested? Please read my blog. Then, if you have questions, I would be happy to answer them. I look forward to hearing from you.