The Meaning of Suffering

I began writing poetry as soon as I learned to write - it became a salve, a means of connection, a mode of reckoning with the contradictoriness of life. Occasionally, a line from some long-forgotten verse leaps into my consciousness, clear as day, as if to impart relevant wisdom from my childhood self. One snippet visits my consciousness more than most:

"Life is what it is, and naught up 'till that / The sun hits my face and the wind hits my back."

These lines translate into feeling, for me, more than anything rational, into an exhalation of breath, a pleasant resignation to the facts of existence: that life is what it is (and naught up 'till that), and that the ever-shifting intermixture of sun (joy) and wind (suffering) is an inextricable part of life.

I imagine we all have moments of clarity amidst the chaotic hubbub of the everyday, personal mantras that shear us of our silly agenda to control that which cannot be controlled. Born on the wings of the protestant ethic and the American dream, of pop psychology techniques like those outlined in The Secret, we yank ourselves up by our bootstraps - and rise, and succeed - but eventually, fall. In the descent, or in the preface to it, I hear my younger self whispering poetry through the ether, and exhale.

I wonder what Elizabeth Edwards hears. I wonder what Tony Snow hears. Their cancers underlie us all; in the fundamental inevitability of suffering and, eventually, death, we all come together as one. We transcend boundaries and borders and merge into stillness, into whatever conception of the afterward you prefer. And yet, at the mention of a person's unraveling, we turn away. We question, for instance, whether John Edwards should proceed with his campaign, or rather should duck out and care for his ailing wife out of the public eye. We'd like to get back to pretending that we can live forever, facilitated by our regimens of healthy living and positive thinking.

We could use a first lady coping with cancer, if you ask me. We could use a president going through the turmoil of caring for a sick - and possibly dying - spouse. We could use a national revisiting of the way we treat the sick, refuse to finance their medical care, the way we look at them sideways, willing them to disappear; the way we will eventually be looked at ourselves. Al Pacino's character in Tony Kushner's HBO adaptation of Angels in America says it well, as he lies in a hospital bed dying of AIDS:

"The worst part of being sick in America... is that you're booted out of the parade. Americans have no use for the sick. Now, look at Reagan. He's so healthy, he's hardly human. He's 100 if he's a day. He takes a slug in the chest... two days later he's out west, riding ponies in his PJs. I mean, who does that? That's America. It's just no country for the infirm."

It's true that ours is no country for the infirm, and consequently, some of the greatest suffering born of injury or illness arises from the threat of being disappeared before we actually disappear, of being prematurely dislodged from social discourse, left alone in sanitariums either physical or social. Of course it's deeply ironic, the way we treat our sick, not simply because we all fall apart eventually, but also because many of the philosophers, artists and saints we so revere found inspiration in the depths of suffering.

"What is a poet?" asked Kierkegaard. "An unhappy man who in his heart harbors a deep anguish, but whose lips are so fashioned that the moans and cries which pass over them are transformed into ravishing music... And men crowd about the poet and say to him, 'Sing for us soon again' - which is as much as to say, 'May new sufferings torment your soul.'"

Happiness, Proust wrote, "is hardly more than one useful quality, namely to make unhappiness possible. In our happiness, we should form very sweet bonds, full of confidence and attachment, in order that the sundering of them may cause us that priceless rending of the heart which is called unhappiness." And further: "Works of art, like artesian wells, mount higher in proportion as the suffering has more deeply pierced the heart."

There is no doubt that suffering holds within it the potential to bring us closer to ourselves and thus to others; it tends to dampen blind ambition, to derail the escalating pursuit of ever higher worldly goals (fame, beauty, money, power). In other words, it can potentially temper the negative effects that the political machine often has on those within it, the whole "power corrupts" truism. Power corrupts and takes us away from our humanity - and suffering, physical or otherwise, can at times strip away the hubris and artifice and leave remaining - for a moment - a naked heart.

Naturally, a politician need not be a philosopher, an artist or a saint; and suffering is not a prerequisite to empathy or authenticity. Further, there's no guarantee that suffering will render a person anything close to what I'm describing. But at the very least, having John and Elizabeth Edwards remain in the spotlight through the primaries and perhaps beyond will cause enough unease to spur dialogue and reflection. Maybe we'll start to hear our personal mantras more frequently, begin to live more in the space of clarity and surrender. Maybe someday we'll stop running away from sickness and trampling whomever cannot keep up.

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