The two faces of suffering

THE TWO FACES OF SUFFERING

Cl. Mario D’Couto SDB

            In one of my previous articles, I had written about suffering as a problem or a mystery [Please refer to the old posts for the article on “Suffering: A problem or a mystery”]. In that article, I had tried to bring about an understanding of the way we look at suffering; about whether we treat it as a problem or a mystery and so on.

            In this article, I intend to write about how suffering can turn out to be a negative quality. From a positive angle, suffering shows us that we are still human; that we do not live in isolation. In order to understand the negative aspect of anger, we should first understand as to what is Stoicism.

            Stoicism was basically a movement more than a philosophy. It propagated that one should be an ‘iron.’ A stoic was called not to feel pain or sorrow. He was meant to be tough, no matter what the situation may be. Thomas Merton would say that, “To accept suffering stoically, to receive the burden of the unavoidable and to bare it strongly is no consecration.” This would therefore imply that for a person without Christina faith, Stoicism seems to be the most fitting attitude towards suffering. Stoicism, at times, seems to be identified with an attitude stiffened by pride and defiance.


            As long as we can congratulate ourselves for bearing up strongly under suffering, we really have not yet experienced the full impact of suffering. We are still masters of the situation. It is when we experience weakness and inability to suffer well that we realize what we are, namely limited creatures. Humbly, we may then turn to others for support and yet ultimately find that we are alone in this very painful experience that has impinged upon our lives. 

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