There’s a guy in my neighborhood who goes off on regular afternoon “F*** You!” binges at the top of his lungs. Over and over and over. Chant-like. He lives in earshot. I don’t know if he’s standing at a window or in his backyard, but it goes on a while. At first I was appalled, then annoyed, then it occurred to me. He’s suffering.
A few weeks back, I had a toothache that lasted three days before undergoing a root canal. Those three days gave me an opportunity to contemplate suffering, which led to a not-so-groundbreaking insight: everybody suffers. It may be physical pain, psychic anguish or soul sickness, but suffering is universal — no matter how strong your support system or your efforts to insulate.
Some suffer more than others, but minor or major, from discomfort to unspeakable agony, suffering is universal. It may be the universal human experience. I wish I could say love is likewise universal, but I’m not so sure. Some are so broken they seem incapable of love. One of them is president of the United States. And he’s very good at making other people suffer for it.
We inflict suffering on others or are afflicted by it. Sometimes both. Someone else may be responsible. More often it’s our own damn fault, as Jimmy Buffet used to sing. Sometimes it’s no one’s fault. To have a body and a psyche in a physical universe is to suffer. Nobody gets out of life unscathed.
As Dread Pirate Roberts says in the film Princess Bride: “Life is suffering, Princess. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.” And a lot of people have made a lot of money selling ways to escape suffering. But that just creates its own form of suffering. And there are so many forms of suffering: loss of loved ones, regrets, real or imagined villains who brought you to your current predicament.
Some suffer outwardly, some stoically. Some are so stoic they aren’t even aware they’re suffering. Some suffer so loudly, you can’t help wondering why.
We all reside somewhere along the suffering spectrum, which likely inspired the adage, “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” Life isn’t only suffering, fortunately, but everyone suffers from something.
F*** You guy may be “more sinned against than sinning,” as Shakespeare put it in King Lear. For some, the great battle is their own body chemistry, which makes those of us less afflicted relatively lucky, but that doesn’t mean we should dismiss or deny our own suffering. It’s what we have in common.
A mindfulness meditation leader, Vinnie Ferraro, says there are two kinds of suffering: one kind leads to more suffering and one leads to less suffering. When some suffer, their first thought is payback. Israelis, for instance, suffered greatly from the Oct. 7, 2023 assault by Hamas. But their government’s wildly disproportionate retaliation led to much greater suffering — for the people of Gaza, obviously, but also for the people of Israel who likely feel no safer for the effort.
The other path is empathy and compassion. When we suffer, we know we’re not alone. We recognize that suffering is our common bond. That kind of suffering can lead to less suffering. But if we address only the symptoms and not the cause, suffering continues.
Bishop Desmond Tutu said it’s one thing to pull drowning people out of the river. But someone also needs to go upriver to find out why they’re falling in — and prevent that from happening.
The opioid crisis emerged from a desire to relieve chronic physical suffering — but without thinking through the consequences of addiction (and the greed of those who exploited the situation to amass obscene fortunes). And we still don’t fully comprehend the suffering that is causing our epidemic of “deaths of despair.”
Suffering in this society has become insufferable. Some suffering “builds character,” but it also makes us vulnerable — and that creates an opportunity to suffer in a way that leads to less suffering.
What have you suffered? The worst suffering I ever experienced was one night of loneliness long ago that was so intense I wasn’t sure I would survive it. I learned a lesson about the depth of mental anguish — and the power of friends who helped me get through it by opening their door and welcoming me in, unannounced.
Religion attempts to address the problem of suffering. The story of Buddhism, for instance, begins with a pampered prince who leaves the family compound and witnesses suffering for the first time in the people he encounters, which sparks compassion, and a great insight: that desire is at the root of our suffering, that we need to let go of our less healthy attachments, and we must learn to embrace life’s impermanence.
The story of Christianity, meanwhile, ends with the horrific suffering of crucifixion, leading to a wildly improbable happy ending, but the cross is the climax for many because human beings don’t readily identify with rising from the dead. They do, however, identify with suffering, and they identify with the God-Man Jesus who, through his suffering becomes, in the end, fully human.
And through our own suffering — if it leads us to universal compassion for those who universally suffer — we too have an opportunity to become more fully human.