Suffering is the only path to creativity. Suffering is an obstruction to creativity. Suffering is a lack. Lack intensifies pleasure. Suffering is oppression. Suffering is freedom (revolution). Suffering is evidence of reality. Suffering is coping. Suffering is necessary for an end. Suffering cannot be an end but is an inevitable means. We all think very differently about suffering. But what is suffering? And what should we do with it?

The first noble truth of Buddhism is that there is suffering. Suffering exists. Suffering do be. Suffering has permeated our lives since our first moment on Earth. As babies are born, most of them cry in agony as their lung sacs fill with air – this marks the healthy start of respiration. But we do not always look at suffering as healthy. There are various scales of suffering: heartbreaks, killings, mutilations, homicide, genocide, and so on. Then there are petty miseries: bumping your toe on the table on your way out, biting your own tongue, skin peeling off from the side of your nails, and so on.

The second noble truth of Buddhism is that there is a cause of suffering. The third noble truth is that there is an end to suffering. The fourth noble truth is that there is a way leading to the end of suffering. While the first three noble truths are merely descriptive, the fourth noble truth hints at something more. If there is a way to end suffering, do we ought to follow the way? Do we ought to end suffering?

Different philosophical notions have been founded around the idea of suffering and what we should do with it. I want to first write about some of those conceptions and then elaborate on my personal thoughts on suffering, its intellectualization, and how it relates to today’s contemporary culture.

In Buddhist conception, the exact word used is dukkha, for which the translation of suffering is quite uncharitable. Dukkha, if correctly translated, would mean something like “unsatisfactory tendency of impermanent states and things”, which would also include pleasure. Just as suffering brings forth the image of Buddha in Eastern philosophy, in Western philosophy, suffering immediately brings forth Schopenhauer, a German philosopher who was also inspired by Buddhism. He posits that the cause of suffering is “will” - an ever-striving, blind, unconscious essence that everyone is made up of. And for him, denying this will to life is the ultimate solution out of suffering. Being an ascetic, not fulfilling what your body craves for — hunger, sex, thirst – is Schopenhauer’s solution to getting rid of suffering. “Every fulfillment of our wishes won from the world is only like the alms that keep the beggar alive today so that he may starve again tomorrow”, Schopenhauer says. My class notes for Schopenhauer from a semester ago state: “an attempt to fit Eastern philosophy into his ad hoc, utterly unbelievable metaphysics.” A strong sentiment, but that is my opinion.

But Buddhism and Schopenhauerian readings are not the only understandings of suffering. Are there more optimistic readings of suffering? Friedrich Nietzsche sees suffering as something to be conquered. He argues that suffering creates higher men – people who have the ability to create and determine their own values. Suffering, for Nietzsche, is not something to be glorified (he is addressing modern Christianity in saying this). Suffering for Nietzsche is not a virtue to be worshipped, but it is a great adversity that makes you stand out. Even though Nietzsche is highly controversial, the idea that suffering has intrinsic value, because it makes what you suffered for more grand and fulfilling, greatly resonates with many people today. “I worked day and night for my Hackathon, and I won it, and it was the best feeling ever. I do not know if I would have felt the same without the suffering in the process”, said one of my friends when asked about suffering.

Would you appreciate good things in your life if there were no bad things to contrast them with? This is a big philosophical question. But, to me, it brings forth a great danger, politically speaking: With the narrative that suffering is necessary, and that happiness is contingent on suffering, do we justify gross atrocities? Suffering when working for a Hackathon, and suffering because you do not have food to eat sound like different categories of suffering to me. Even more alarming, it can justify oppression. Are you poor? Just work hard and suffer, for overcoming suffering makes you tough. Oppression? Character Development. There is a chance that the narrative of suffering making you a better person can be used as a means to justify inequality.

Levinas, a French philosopher, thinks suffering leads to an ethical state. He argues that enjoyment is a pre-ethical state, where one has not faced the “other” and is content with sensory fulfillment. When the “I” encounters the “other”, the “other’s” suffering places an ethical demand on the “I”. In this conception, suffering calls us into action when we face the needs of others. Here, suffering is not about you. It is about what others’ suffering does to you.

In today’s context, understanding the role of suffering and how we ought to understand it is becoming increasingly important. Consider modern therapy. How should a therapist help you? Are they supposed to take away your suffering? Someone might make the argument: If suffering is so valuable and even instrumentally good, it should not be the case that we outsource our suffering to our therapist. Instead, such a person might have a different idea of what a therapist's role should be. Perhaps a therapist helps you learn how to make the best instrumental use of your suffering. They can help you categorize which suffering is detrimental to your goal and which suffering is necessary for your fulfillment. That sounds to me like a significant shift from how therapy operates in the modern context. A completely different perspective than this would be from one who believes that suffering needs to be completely eliminated. Do not let the lion eat a deer, for the deer suffers, and suffering ought not to exist, they might argue.

At the end of the day, however, what all of these philosophers and I are doing is the intellectualization of suffering. There are some philosophers who believe that this process in itself is an injustice to suffering. Suffering is to be felt and cannot be expressed. Its mode of expression is purely emotional and nothing more. I can imagine a philosopher coming up with the following aphorism: “The moment you intellectualize suffering, you are already romanticizing suffering, and then, there is no point in arguing whether the world is good or bad — you have lost the power to judge.” So, ask yourself: What do you think of suffering in your life? Do you want to eliminate it, or would you still keep some part of it in your ideal world? And, perhaps ironically, the last question: is it just to ask the question in the first place?