The Everlasting Myth About Suffering
Why suffering doesn’t make us stronger
Suffering is inevitable. We start our lives with a grueling transitional experience as we leave the womb to breathe in an unknown world. Suffering continues as we develop from a baby into an adult. We have diseases, emotional pain, existential teen-angst, or even unmet basic needs.
Some argue being alive is so hard that it would be more ethical not to have children anymore, to end the possibility of human suffering once and for all. They are the anti-natalists. Although I understand the argument, it’s very hard to calculate the differential between pleasure and pain. And, because I’m an optimist, I think pleasure wins.
Yes, suffering and despair infuse our lives, but we also have humor, tenderness, and pleasure. If you are born into a harsh environment, the scale points to the pain side, but even then it’s possible to reverse it.
So, we can have an optimist or pessimist outlook on life, but there’s a common vision almost everyone has: suffering makes us grow. As Kahlil Gibran, a famous self-help author once wrote, “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Our society cultivates the idea that human development thrives in tough environments. We see this in almost every medium: movies, books, religious texts, and music. Suffering is glorified.
But this is wrong.
Pain doesn’t serve a self-developmental purpose, it’s a survival mechanism. We feel pain to know something is wrong. If you step on a lego, those tiny plastic bumps activate nerves in the foot and the message goes to the brain in light-speed. Then we look down at the problem and decide what to do. Psychological pain follows the same principle: we feel depressed because there are several forces — internal and external — driving our brains to function differently. It’s human-evolution working as intended, there isn’t any meaning or inner development purpose in suffering.
In fact, suffering hinders development. If we look at unmet basic needs, we see that children born into poverty, who don’t have access to food, have academic and behavior problems. Later in life, these children are prone to experience depression or suicide ideation. They don’t “emerge with a stronger soul” as Kahlil Gibran hinted. Suffering at this basic level in childhood harms our future life. It even stunts brain development and intellectual ability.
But it’s not just about basic needs. Family and interpersonal suffering also cause repercussions on human development. Bonding issues increase the risk of bullying, for example. Another well-studied topic about child development is sexual abuse, which has “long-term repercussions for adult mental health, parenting relationships, and child adjustment in the succeeding generation”.
Childhood trauma weakens us. It’s not a path for growth or awareness. It’s a path for a life of emotional problems, cognitive issues, alcoholism and violence, outcomes related to childhood abuse and neglect. And if we succeed in life, even though we experienced difficult childhoods, it’s despite our pain, not because of it.
And what about harsh experiences in adult life? Maybe children are incapable of transforming pain into internal growth and awareness. Adults have more insight than children, so suffering may be a positive and transforming experience for them.
Let’s see what science says.
One of the most common areas that cause suffering in our adult lives is work. Our jobs give us a sense of purpose, a direction to follow even when relational areas, like family or love, aren’t functioning well. So, what happens when we have work-related problems? Well, the risk to have coronary heart disease rises. If we are dying from a heart attack, it’s a little difficult to self-develop. Work-stress also relates to high levels of anxiety, depression, and fatigue.
And what about relational issues? Problems in romantic relationships induce psychological issues? Yes. Domestic abuse is “significantly related to increased risks of major depression and suicidal ideation.” Bad relationships can also trigger heart disease, obesity, and even slow wound healing.
Suffering isn’t very good for us. And happiness? Chuck Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, wrote, “We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace”. It’s another side of the idea that suffering is a tool for learning. The thing is, science shows that happy people live longer, have superior immune systems and better overall self-esteem. Happiness also increases our capability to receive outside stimuli, so we learn better.
If happiness is more effective in promoting internal growth than suffering, why do we still glorify suffering? And why do we feel that it helps our self-development process?
Because we are natural storytellers. Because we need meaning. The narratives we create about our experiences are crucial to overcoming adversity. But these stories aren’t suitable tools to describe reality in a non-biased fashion, they mostly reflect our need to make sense of our experiences. Instead of accepting how random and chaotic suffering is, we assign a purpose to it. A story that makes sense.
But it’s just a story. Sometimes with a lot of truth in it, but the truth lives mostly in the story around overcoming suffering, not on suffering itself.
To conclude, I leave you with the amusing words of William Butler Yeats:
“If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise.”
