Mining nuggets on suffering well from this by Jordan B. Peterson:
“When you’re in hell, anything that lifts you out even a little bit, which stops it from becoming completely catastrophic, is a lifejacket that stops you from drowning.
This realism about the causes and the consequences of suffering extends to the remedy.
There is no all-encompassing, immediate miraculous fix. It takes time to transcend the hell that one can be dragged down to.
It takes longer if the reaction to whatever the situation was or is has made it worse. It is worse if you’ve allowed yourself to be pulled down, without resisting, or even enjoying the fall. It is worst of all if you’ve jumped.
The road out is hard, and can seem impassable. This alone can make it seem easier to continue to wallow in the all-embracing bitterness of the fatal familiarity of suffering. Why make the effort to move on out, when what’s out there could be worse? The thing is, it very well could be. Sometimes, the cause of the pain finishes you off. A fatal illness, mental health issues, family breakdown, redundancy, addiction, can all prove too much. Sometimes there is no up. But sometimes there is. When there is, the question over whether the journey up is worth it, is bearable, is one for each individual to answer.
The honesty about the frail condition of humanity and the ultimate choice between resentment and resurrection feels as honest as the prescription that alleviates it: Truth. Truth, spoken and carefully articulated, can enable us to transcend suffering. Personally, I’ve come to think that the more suffering one experiences the more truthful one has to strive to be, which is what I try to do in my writing. Lies, the tool of the snake in the Garden of Eden, do the exact opposite. They lead to the gas chamber, the Gulag, the mass execution ditch. Truth stops you falling down into what is worse and might enable you to reach something better. But it is a certainty that lies make everything worse. If nothing else, lies make you lose who you are at the worst possible time.
This is what Peterson is trying to get across: the answer to suffering is for the individual to find a source of meaning. He likes to quote Nietzsche, who said that, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” If you have no why to live for, how can you bear the how? I can say from my own experience that this is true. He (or she) who has a “why” not only has something to live for, to aim at and to work towards. It can also act as a reminder that life has something to offer, and most importantly, that we might have something to offer life.
The trail is rough and there are dangers along with it, but Peterson’s message that suffering can be alleviated through truth, meaning, and striving is a whole lot more hopeful than, “You’re okay as you are.”
……,Truth, spoken and carefully articulated, can enable us to transcend suffering…….
Word and Spirit…. the Source of truth for Elijah, and for each of us. And the balm we need in the midst of suffering.
posted 9/12/23. CBB