Suffering and Meaning
In our day to day life, we often meet people that are bitter and cruel. This is mostly a result of pain, anxiety or hopelessness brought about by suffering. While there is some suffering that we can’t do much about, there is the almost pointless suffering. Only gaining significance and growing when we focus on it. You can’t suffer pointlessly without becoming bitter, and bitterness brings about resentment which in turn brings about cruelty.
If there is something that Buddhism teaches one, is that life is suffering, this is the first noble truth of Buddhism. In our efforts to lessen or keep suffering at bay we have adopted many cures, from motivational speakers who emphasize on attitude and self-esteem, to myriad forms of pleasure-seeking in the form of happiness.
While attitude and self-esteem do hold their purpose, their misinterpretation has led to egoistic individuals riding their wave of self-deceit, and in life’s storms happiness disappears, therefore, we have to pursue something deeper. Most of what we seek is fleeting so it’s better to pursue meaningful things, this orients you and centres you in life making you useful, not only to your family also for the community. Aiming at something meaningful that is difficult to achieve, but not so difficult that you’re unable to attain it, this allows for incremental improvement over time. A lot of what gives people meaning is not self-esteem or the pursuit of happiness, it is the adoption of responsibility. The crucial issue is the identification between responsibility and meaning. However, this is easier said than done.
As Jordan B Peterson points out in his 12 Rules For Life; The right frame of mind to achieve this is to treat yourself like you are someone responsible for helping. This has the presupposition that it’s worth having you around and despite everything, it’s worth to try and make things better. This idea is profound since we often face the fear of judgement and the isolation and loneliness that comes in the pursuit of something meaningful, for it’s very lonely. If your goal is just to work a job to make as much money as possible and to incessantly pursue social status along the way then it is fairly easy to find people that share these values.
If however the development of a more complete personality and the cultivation of a more meaningful life, then such company is hard to come by. However, time does not stand still as we look for such a company to embed ourselves in. Therefore we must learn to exist in an environment that is always exerting a downward pull on us.
This is what Nietzsche noted when he used the term ressentiment; a festering hatred of life generated by feelings of impotence in the face of an external reality felt to be overpowering and threatening. People with ressentiment are driven by envy that motivates them to take revenge on things higher than them trying to bring them to a more mediocre level, and if there is something that misery and suffering love it’s the company. The problem with ressentiment is it makes one look at life like nothing matters, while with responsibility most if not everything matters. To forego the opportunity to take up meaning is to take the stance of a victim, to take a step back from responsibility, attributing your suffering to some injustice specifically directed at you and somehow the fault of others. Abandoning responsibility is to miss the great adventure of your life, an adventure that in it has great meaning for your life. The idea that it’s unfair that you have to suffer and that your problems are to be solved for you, is very attractive because it leaves us with nothing to do but complain.
Complaining has become a mainstay in democratic societies, and we need to learn from the people that had to endure communism, particularly in Russia. Solzhenitsyn alluded that you have to bear your burden properly and live forthrightly in the world. A more exemplary example would be Anton Chekhov, who’s life was not short of misery and suffering. As Robert Greene describes his cure, that led to Chekhov’s meaningful existence.
“[Chekhov] made a vow to himself: no more bowing and apologizing to people; no more complaining and blaming; no more disorderly living and wasting time. The answer to everything was work and love, work and love.” -Robert Greene, The laws of human nature.
If you confront life’s suffering you get to understand not that life is way better than you think, but that you are tougher than you think. This can only happen when we pursue something meaningful, for there is a spirit in us that comes alive when we do this, it has the resilience and strength to contend with the sufferings of existence without us being resentful and bitter. A note from Chekhov’s letters will help you get some perspective.
“Write about how this young man squeezes the slave out of him drop by drop and how one fine morning he wakes to find the blood that the blood coursing through his veins is no longer that of a slave but that of a real human being.” — Anton Chekhov.
It is our choices and actions, or lack thereof, that shape who we eventually become. So what choice will you make for a meaningful life?
