ESSAY
LIFE IS CRUEL: PAIN AND SUFFERING
Right:
Hindu Painting
Goddess Mahakali, connected to the cruelty and suffering of life
To live is to
suffer, postulates the Pali Tritaka, an ancient Buddhist text,
in a typically Asian way of speculation.
The Bible
echoes similar ancient traditions, in beautiful verses: «And I
too, when born, inhaled the common air, and fell upon the
kindred earth; willing, I uttered that first sound common to
all» (Wisdom Book).
These
judgements of life are, obviously, a direct result of our
human condition, and of the evils continuously lurking around
us. Evil is as a «hidden tiger, ambushed and ready to kill the
unwary», to use an old Buddhist maxim. Indeed, hidden in the bag
of fortune and life, along with forms such as pain, illness,
unhappy accidents and death, is always human suffering. «Life
fights cruelly against the cruelty of the world and resists with
cruelty to the cruelty of life. All living being kill and eat
living beings» (Edgar Morin).
Yet there is
also the other side. In our way and within the limits that
reality and fate concede to us, we have the capacity to deny
suffering. Within us, lives an obstinate instinctive force,
expressed by positive dreams, optimism, determination in living
and being happy. And though never definitively, we often get it,
against the logic of the cruel world.
To get the
denial of suffering, the ancient Roman and Greek philosophers
adopted particular philosophies of life, based on a wisdom that
demands friendship and controlled pleasures (in the case of the
epicureans), or special attitudes towards life, refusing to feed
material insensate wishes and fears, and creating in us the
persuasion that it is worthwhile to live (in the case of stoic
philosophers).
Cicero, one of
the great exponents of Roman stoicism, expresses that philosophy
in a superior way, when he asserts: «He who does not consume
himself with injuries, futilities and enthusiasms, who does not
enervate with fear, and doesn’t boil with desires and envy, is a
sage; with serenity and firmness he is serene and in harmony
with himself».
But there are,
obviously, other more common ways of denying suffering, or of
minimizing it.
Faith… faith in God is one of them. Faith is a balsam and a
source of human comfort. «To have pleasure from You, in You and
through You: that is the Happiness. And there is no other»,
considered
Saint Augustine, referring to God.
Art is another
way of escaping from a cruel world. Art is a balsam in a world
without soul, otherwise insupportable, said
Arthur Schopenhauer. «The
role of art is to make our world habitable», also proclaimed
William Saroyan
. As it is friendship («Friendship
redoubles joy and
cuts grief in half»,
said
Francis
Bacon) or love («Only the soul that loves is
happy», said
Johann Goethe).
These are some
ways – maybe the most important – of achieving what can be the
biggest of our victories: the victory, although transitory and
never definitive, over the suffering and the cruelty of the
world.
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See also:
Life Pain and Cruelty Quotes
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