How Suffering Can Be Good for Us
During life’s most difficult times, we can discover redemption through creation.
Mark McGann, a modest and scholarly chaplain, represented a California hospice that took care of my sister, Julie. He gathered my family around a dining room table. Speaking in a calm voice, almost a whisper, he asked us, “Is there value in suffering?”
Our wife-mother-sister-grandmother was dying in the master bedroom ten yards away. That moment felt as raw as life can be, Julie’s departure imminent, the question of her suffering a haunting concern. Her remaining hours had become a buffet of pain and anxiety medications, administered way too often. Without qualifications, we were hurting as she struggled.
My analytical mind attempted to diminish Mark’s question, its profundity. Suffering is fundamental to the human condition, I rationalized. Suffering creates a vivid contrast illuminating joy, happiness, and satisfaction. It is a harsh lesson on the other side of sublime. We all must suffer, whether we choose to or not. There must be value in that which is given in our lives, even though we hope to live joyfully as much as possible.
Suffering begets maturation for some; we grow wiser as we suffer. Some become more resilient as suffering cycles into our lives. Some will do anything to cover up suffering, whether with hedonism, psychoactive drugs, unbridled consumerism, or tortuous decisions that end marriages and careers. Some commit suicide. When suffering comes, suffering is in charge. Suffering cannot lose; we can merely arrive at compromises through learning, adaptation, accommodation, and acceptance.
Helen Keller, born with the innate abilities to see and hear, contracted either scarlet fever or meningitis at nineteen months. The illness ravaged her sensory organs until she became sightless and deaf. Keller was the first blind and deaf person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. She then wrote and published twelve books as well as lectured worldwide. “Little Bronco,” as friends called her, understood suffering from a perspective that would be terrifying to most. She wrote, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” And, indeed, Keller’s indefatigable persistence to learn her native language and pursue higher education stand as hallmarks of suffering transformed into self-evolving significance.
A few days after my big sister died, as I was grappling for a comforting perspective, I thought back fifteen years when Julie and I had joined forces as synchronized sibling caregivers, almost indomitable, overseeing every detail of our parents’ care. Then I recalled dark days following their deaths less than 24-hours apart. Both gone in one day.
During the weeks after their memorial service, I existed in a thick, murky fog, slogging through days of routine and work, numb and sad and distracted. That became a dark time when life required me to look at suffering and attempt to glean a modicum of psychological advantages, to discover an upside of such a significant loss of both parents. The haze did not begin to lift until three months later when I undertook an impetuous journey to a strange and alluring place called Amsterdam, Holland.
I did not merely need a vacation, which arguably I did. Amsterdam called to me, something akin to a mythic, spiritual calling as described by Joseph Campbell, a renowned professor and comparative mythologist. He described my impulse as a call to adventure. “This fateful region of both treasure and danger,” wrote Campbell, “may be variously represented: as a distant land, a forest, a kingdom, underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight.” I planned for impossible delight rather than unimaginable torment.
While walking from Amsterdam Centraal Station along Herengradt Canal, I became spellbound with the ancient Dutch city, exceptionally friendly natives, and an all-pervading creative vibe. From Rembrandt’s original painting studio to a modern museum showcasing Vincent Van Gogh, I traced footsteps of the Masters. I soaked up ambiance of Renaissance and Baroque architecture and a captivating blend of modern technology meeting Old World craft. I walked many miles every day, feasting on cuisine from ethnic traditions spanning the globe.
All this stimulation and, yes, escapism, ignited my creativity, which I then expressed through photography. I took hundreds of photos, with most images becoming candid portraits of the Dutch people being themselves, from young mothers on bicycles transporting their toddlers, to innovative street musicians and mimes. One young woman stood alone in the dark of night, playing her flute while behind her a demonic man reaches for her from a giant poster. A wizened runner impressed me with his tough determination to finish a marathon while rushing ahead of younger men.
I found odd contrasts of compositional elements, creating more than merely standard travel images; I captured visual stories of a European setting and history different from my home city of Denver, Colorado.
Suffering over the loss of my parents opened windows in my mind where I saw things differently. I discovered a way of living that I could not have fully grasped without added gravity from inconsolable loss. I found modernity in a centuries-old city built below sea level. I allowed my senses to take in all that exotic travel can offer if we are alert, present, and open to new experiences. Langston Hughes, a mid-twentieth century jazz poet gave me permission to live again, penning: “Life is for the living / Death is for the dead / Let life be like music / And death a note unsaid.”
Gently, numbing grief transformed into fresh possibilities: a satellite’s perspective of how life might productively proceed forward. I discovered inspiration to create and contribute, chastened by the past but not stymied forevermore.
After returning home, I produced a photographic exhibition. I worked for several months to transform my photos into giant, digitally printed posters. I became immersed with stimulating details of image amplification through Adobe Photoshop. Thus, two young blonds emerged from a sepia duotone depicting their satisfying labors repairing a bicycle, their transportation to freedom. They didn’t even see me intrude.
In the background of my feverish work, I thought about Mom and Dad and what their lives had meant to me: Dad being my moral compass, inspiring determination and a measure of righteous indignation, and Mom being the wellspring of my unquenchable urge to be creative, whether with words or images or a combination of both.
Nine months after our parents passed away, I hosted a reception at Stella’s, a popular gourmet coffee shop in the Washington Park area of Denver, where my framed Amsterdam photographs remained on display for several weeks. More than fifty friends and family members attended the art show, and I received exactly the compensation I had been seeking: sharing my visual perspective about the joys of living and not suffering. A poster series illustrated street walkers at sunset after an evening shower and transported my guests across the Atlantic Ocean to The Netherlands, another time and place.
I am convinced that without psychic sorrow I would not have traveled to Amsterdam when I did; nor would I have seen what I saw — transitory moments when visual elements aligned under optimum lighting conditions; nor would I have been diligent to capture the images; nor would I have been motivated to achieve mastery of Photoshop so my photos could be enhanced and perfected for digital printing; nor would I have invested time and resources to convert improved images into large format, framed prints; nor would I have taken creative risks involved in sharing my work with friends and business associates in a pubic setting.
Suffering taught me lessons: It slices deep into the psyche; its dominance can be absolute for a period. Suffering causes regrets. Suffering lingers and changes one’s outlook. We have suffered; we are suffering; we will suffer. Difficult lessons.
Actor and screenwriter Sylvester Stallone — who first became famous for his breakthrough movie, Rocky, the story of a struggling prizefighter — understands regret even from a lofty perch as an A-list Hollywood celebrity: “I have tons of regrets, but I think that’s one of the reasons that pushes people to create things. Out of their angst, their regret, comes the best from artists, painters, and writers.”
Suffering motivated me to re-engage and find unexpected ways to bring permanence to this transitory existence through photos and posters that can remain visible through the years. Suffering inspired. Suffering flipped non-being into being. Suffering triggered creativity, liberating me through one of many available channels of human communication. Profound lessons.
Prose, poetry, paintings, photography, music, dance, pottery, jewelry, woodcraft, and all other creations of suffering spirits help confirm there is value in suffering.
