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Our Suffering Has Meaning
How Philosophy Helps Us Endure Life’s Difficulties
Suffering is the inevitable consequence of living.
Every human being will suffer from the moment they go through that traumatic life event called birth. Our bodies and our minds are fragile. If we’re lucky enough to live a long life, we accumulate mental and physical scars and bruises.
We use coping mechanisms to live on in spite of the myriad of different ways we suffer, from physical injury and pathological illness to yearnings and depression. Those mechanisms can be unconsciously natural or positively cultural.
Our immune system saves our life practically every day, our mind becomes adept at compartmentalising mental anguish. We use medicine, exercise and ritual to fix our bodies and minds, and act as a community to care for others.
The mere absence of suffering could be considered good fortune. In times and places where medical science is not as available, illnesses that are easily remedied for us cause an immense amount of suffering. In the thousands of years before dentistry had become common practice, persistent toothaches had caused people to kill themselves in despair.
Human beings can fix different types of suffering in different ways, but the fact of suffering still stands. We…
