The experience of being alive
On the dichotomy of suffering and flourishment
Introduction to March’s Theme
The experience of being alive can at times seem like an unbearable weight. It requires an individual to go through emotions both high and low as well as constant trials and tribulations. As Milan Kundera has written and titled his most famous work, life can simply be described as “the unbearable lightness of being.”1
This unbearable weight is a part of what it means to be alive—to feel, to love and lose, to go through difficulties and disasters, to suffer.2
For the month of March, we explore suffering with topics such as the experience of being alive, how the opinions of others make us feel, the contrasting emotions of pleasure and pain, how to hold onto optimism in tough times, and how suffering assists in our pursuit of virtue.
While pain and suffering are not always avoidable, while it seems at times never ending, it is bearable—more importantly, we can work with life to not only overcome the suffering we’re forced to endure, but embrace it.
In a given moment it may seem like our pain and suffering will never end, that this moment-by-moment weight will never let up, but science has shown that that memory assists in erasing this. When reflecting in hindsight, that pain and suffering not only lets up, we don’t remember it. As psychologists Chip and Dan Heath have observed, our memory focuses on peak moments versus the play-by-play experience we had.
“What’s indisputable is when we assess our experiences, we don’t average our minute-by-minute sensations. Rather, we tend to remember flagship moments: the peaks, the pits, and the transitions.”3
Throughout history, philosophers from both the east and west have debated how best to handle suffering. More recently, the famous buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh took the approach that much of life’s suffering is due to misperceptions:
“During our daily lives we have many misperceptions. If I don't understand you, I may be angry at you all the time. We are not capable of understanding each other, and that is the main source of human suffering.”4
Likewise, over 2,000 years ago, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus chalked up most of the suffering we experience to an inadequate understanding and awareness of our own judgments:
“It is not things themselves that trouble people, but their opinions about things.”5
But in moments of pain, in moments of suffering, we feel as though time is moving slow rather than fleeting, the emotions just sitting with us. Suffering—emotionally, physically, psychologically—leaves its mark and makes it hard to embrace the day.
For March, we explore how to overcome these moments and the pains of being human—and we start with what it means to be alive, the ever-present dichotomy of suffering and human flourishment.
This Week at a Glance:
This week, we look into what it truly means to suffer in today’s world and how we can flourish within it.
By the time you finish this meditation, you’ll learn:
🍭 What suffering is in today’s terms;
🍬 How having a why brings about relief from suffering;
🍫 How to use judgments to better align with the realities of today’s pains.
“You’re acting like life’s got me on the ropes. I want to be on the ropes, okay? I’m just letting life hit me until it gets tired, and then I’m gonna hit back. It’s a classic rope a-dope.”
Sebastian (played by Ryan Gosling) in the film La La Land
written and directed by Damien Chazelle
Do we hit life or does life hit us? This is an age-old question that has been posed since the dawn of time.
Am I going to rebel against my existence?
Am I going to accept life for what it provides or push its boundaries?
Will I allow others to dictate my fate or will I make my own?
To be human—to exist—is in itself a miracle. The odds of being alive is nearly a 0 % chance.6 And while it may not seem that way, it is a fact—our existence is predicated strongly on the simple truth that life must, and does, find a way.
But how we get through the “way” is not what anyone would call easy. In fact, for the majority of life that exists within the universe, it is a constant game of struggle for survival.
The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer saw this existence and described it as a "scene of tormented and agonized beings, who only continue to exist by devouring each other, in which, therefore, every ravenous beast is the living grave of thousands of others, and its self-maintenance is a chain of painful deaths."7
To hold an existence in this world means two things—first, in order for us to exist, we need to literally ensure something else doesn’t, everything needs to feed and inevitably, the world is devoid of endless resources which forces every organism to fend for itself off another in a zero-sum game for survival. Secondly, what we receive for that “devouring nature”, to quote Schopenhauer, is not only the enjoyment of the highest of highs, we will also inevitably suffer from the lowest of lows.
Selfishly, we accept the highs but would do nearly anything to reject the lows.
To live is, to put it bluntly, to subject ourselves to a world of suffering—not only for ourselves, but for others.
To combat this bleak existence, however, many turn to the underlying principle of Buddhism—that life itself is suffering and that once we learn to accept this, life becomes easier.
But as the writer Brad Stuhlberg has astutely pointed out in his book Master of Change, the word “dukkha,” to which everyone interprets as “suffering” is in fact translated more properly as “hard to face.”
“Du is the prefix for "difficult" or "hard," and kha has many meanings, including "to face." Put them together and what you get is that dukkha actually means "hard to face." Unlike what so many people think, the first noble truth of Buddhism does not teach that life is suffering; rather, it teaches that life is full of things that are hard to face. Perhaps suffering is the most common byproduct of dukkha, but it is not the thing itself.”8
So we have a choice, one which Camus posed and we’ve previously discussed—the first and most important question—will we turn to face the suffering and the realities of life? Or will we turn away and run from it, ceasing to exist?9
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s answer to life was to fight by finding meaning within the bleakness—“If we possess our why of life we can put up with any how.”10
Our why in life, the meaning for our existence, is something that we both need living in a civilized western society and, alternatively, reject as a species. Having a why is a luxury. We are the only organism, to our knowledge, to possess the level of consciousness that we do. As such, we are able to have questions such as “what is my purpose?”, “What is my why?” and “What is the meaning for my existence?”
But for the majority of human existence, to exist was, in itself, our why. As Sebastian Junger writes in Tribe:
“If there are phrases that characterize the life of our early ancestors, "community of sufferers" and "brotherhood of pain" surely must come close.”11
So the first step in facing the suffering, if we are to interpret the first law of Buddhism as Stuhlberg writes, is to in fact reject the notion that we are, in fact, suffering.
In the grand scale of our evolutionary experiences, the world we live in today, for the majority of us, is not suffering. We’re not hunting for our next meal, we’re not sleeping with one eye open to ensure a lion does not attack, we are not walking hundreds if not thousands of miles a year to move and find better land.
But if we reject that view, or rather, accept it but realize it holds little weight over our current existence, then to flourish, we need to turn toward the pain, see where it resides and why it boils up within us, and then diagnose it—determining the best course of action for dealign with it.
The second action then is to, as Epictetus taught his students 2,000 years ago, reassess our judgments of the situation. “Is this situation I am in truly a situation of suffering or is it a privilege I am misrepresenting because it is not comfortable?”
Perhaps then the key to flourishing in modern times is not just to try and excel at what we do, but rather, turn to face the pain of the world, the suffering that we experience, and recognize that the judgments we make about it are what truly determines how we approach the situation. Flourishment then is our keen ability to differentiate true suffering from the uncomfortable realities of modern life.
3-Bullet Summary:
For the majority of human existence, to survive and thrive was our why for living;
For some, such as Nietzsche, to hold a why for our existence assists in overcoming the suffering one faces within life;
A true way of flourishing in today’s world is to understand the lens through-which we are interpreting our existence and examine the judgments we’re making.
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Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
When we talk about suffering this month, we will be focused on the suffering of the human experience more so than the physical torturing that the word ‘suffering’ conjures for someone.
Chip and Dan Heath, The Power of Moments
Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace
Epictetus, How to be Free
Arthur Schopenhauer, Civilized to Death (written by Christopher Ryan)
Brad Stuhlberg, Master of Change
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
Friedrich Nietzsche, In Emergency, Break Glass (written by Nate Anderson)
Truly, a good attitude is key in life….