Day 3: Life in Perspective

Why is Suffering Necessary?

Ultimately, the problem of the meaning of suffering is really the problem of why is suffering necessary? Perhaps we have the right to be considered guilty and to suffer for this. If we are merely the unfortunate victims of circumstances, then we are less than true human beings, and this lames our will to change.

The blows of suffering might be necessary insofar as without them the sufferer might shrink into spiritual oblivion. They might be conceived as the rude awakening to the purpose of out life, to a confrontation with reality. The suffering due to an existential vacuum would then be a healthy despair which urges the individual to do something about it.

We have the right, and responsibility, to own up to this type of suffering in a mature and affirmative manner.


Not Meaning of, but Meaning in!
No one in his or her right mind would seek out suffering. This is masochistic, not normal. Yet there is a suffering from which there is no escape. How to handle it? Transcend it or use it for fulfillment.

The meaning of suffering may be unknowable, but meaning in, or in spite of, the suffering, can be discovered.


Suffering Towards:
It is ill-advised to run away from what life presents to us. The thrust should be to transmute all situations of life into affirmative experiences. When unavoidable suffering presents itself, we should transmute the “suffering from” to a “suffering toward,” to translate it into a positive experience.

Suffering is a basic and potentially affirmative component of life. The right attitude to suffering can give meaning to it.


Meaning in Suffering – An example:
IT is vital to transpose the “suffering from” to a “suffering towards,” to rise above the suffering, to elicit meaning from the suffering. Viktor Frankl illustrates this approach with the example of a doctor who consulted him because he could not shake off the severe depression brought on by the death of his wife. He asked the doctor:

“What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first and your wife would have had to survive you?”

Whereupon he said: “For her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!”

Frankl then added, “You see, Doctor, such suffering has been spared for her, and it is you have to pay for it by surviving and mourning her.”

Suddenly, the doctor’s suffering took on a meaning – the meaning of sacrifice. With meaning, the despair and depression brought on by the death of his wife was vitiated.