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The wisdom of suffering

The world is full of suffering. A glance at any newspaper can testify to this fact and usually arouses a sentiment of melancholy with many examples of life’s misery. Even the most cheerful kind of person may have scores of reason to be unhappy on any single day.

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The world is full of suffering. A glance at any newspaper can testify to this fact and usually arouses a sentiment of melancholy with many examples of life’s misery. Even the most cheerful kind of person may have scores of reason to be unhappy on any single day.
 
For the sake of living well, however, it is worth questioning to what extent suffering can be avoided in a person’s life. As far as physical pain is concerned, the answer may be rather obvious: to the extent that any bodily harm can be avoided, or sickness prevented; but failing which, to the extent that any associated pain or, more precisely, the biological sense of it, can be subdued by medication or any other means. Alternatively, afflictions of the mind – anxiety, frustration, fear, anger, jealousy and all the other forms of mental suffering – may be less readily avoided, no doubt depending on, amongst many other things, the character of the individual concerned.
 
If suffering is more or less a fact, does it offer any merits and, more importantly, is there any way we can choose to suffer so as to benefit from these merits – if not possibly enjoying suffering itself? 
 
Marcel Proust, the French novelist, believed so; and Alain de Botton, the contemporary Swiss writer and philosopher, wittily elucidates on Proust's thinking in his enlightening work How Proust Can Change Your Life
 
“In Proust's view, we don't really learn anything properly until there is a problem, until we are in pain, until something fails to go as we had hoped. Infirmity alone makes us take notice and learn, and enables us to analyse processes which we would otherwise know nothing about...”
 
This is so true. It takes a financial crisis and all the associated tragedies involving reversal in fortune, for many people to realise the true nature of reckless speculation – randomness. Besides, anyone who lives a corporate life for long enough should be able to recall ample incidents about how “shock” - in the form of a verbal reprimand, a warning letter, or a threat of dismissal – is required for someone out of sync in thinking or attitude to fall back in line with the boss' expectations – if it is not too late to do so.
 
Perhaps it is only through suffering that we can be truly enlightened: happiness is good for the body, but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind.
 
As such, there is wisdom to be gained from suffering. Instead of asking how to avoid suffering, the right question should become "how to suffer successfully?" This is what Alain de Botton ingeniously does, and what he suggests is inspiring: 
 
“Though philosophers have traditionally been concerned with the pursuit of happiness, far greater wisdom would seem to lie in pursuing ways to be properly and productively unhappy. The stubborn recurrence of misery means that the development of a workable approach to it must surely outstrip the value of any utopian quest for happiness. 
 
Paradoxically, it is like learning to sleep with the enemy if one has to, rather than being miserably obsessed with dreaming about the perfect partner.
 
However, there is hardly any formal teaching about how to suffer successfully in reality, perhaps, other than related disciplines on how to manage stress. As economic downturn and many associated problems are facts of life, however, business schools and MBA courses could do well by offering practical classes about managing a business through hard times. 
 
In other words, rather than entirely focusing on the pursuit of value creation in good times, no less attention should be paid to the avoidance of value destruction in bad times. 
 
 
This article appeared in Education Post as The wisdom of suffering
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