URSULA K. LEGUIN TALKS ABOUT THE VALUE OF SUFFERING AND HOW TO GET ON THE OTHERSIDE OF PAIN

We should always make use of the sufferings that are inflicted on us by chance according to Samuel Weil. 

PHOTO OF GEORGE BENARD SHAW

He called this the highest existential discipline of the human kind. According to George Benard Shaw, suffering is our supreme conduit to empathy. He said that we do suffer more in imagination than in actual reality. 

This observation was also made by Seneca before offering his timeless anti-dote to anxiety. The truth of the matter is that we do under go pain and suffering in our lives. The fact is that this suffering is real. 

The way we do orient ourselves to this suffering will predict whether we will be able to encounter happiness in our lives in the long run. 

The Buddhists call it ego-illusion and also reaffirming our shared reality. This will determine our well being and also the hope for joy in our lives.

PHOTO OF URSULA K. LEGUIN

 C.S Lewis said that if we do try to exclude the possibility of suffering in our lives that the order of nature and the existence of free wills do involve then we will one day find out that we have actually excluded life itself. 

Ursula K. Leguin explores that indelible relationship between suffering and life in his 1974 novel which was called The Dispossessed. 

In this superb novel that was released in 1974, Le Guin talks about time, loyalty and also the responsibility of humans. In that excellent book, Leguin also talks about profiteering and the values of a highly materialistic and also selfish society of humans. 

He said that suffering is a misunderstanding and it actually does exist in our human society today.

 Leguin said that he does call it a misunderstanding but will not pretend that it does not exist. Leguin describes suffering as a condition that we do live in. And when suffering comes we are aware of it’s presence. 

We can know it as the truth. It is absolutely Ok to fight diseases and also to prevent hunger and injustice like any other social organism does. 

But we should know that there exists no society that can change the nature of existence. It is very difficult for to prevent suffering and avoid it completely. 

One thing that our society of humans can do is to relieve unnecessary suffering but the rest of the pain will always remain with us. The root and the reality will always stay intact.

 Every one of us will have the chance to know grief, if a human being lives for fifty years, that human will have known grief for those number of years he has existed on earth.

 A person will wonder if it is truly a misunderstanding, the idea of grasping after happiness and also the fear of pain. 

Now what if instead of fearing suffering and then running away from it, we just decide to go through it and then beyond that suffering. Beyond that suffering, there is something that we will be able to discover.  

We will find out that it is actually the self that does suffer and then there reaches a point where the self ceases.  

The truth and reality behind suffering is not actually suffering and we cannot find that truth within comfort and happiness. 

During a speech that he gave the public that had gone on rampage on the streets as they struggled to retain the founding principles of their nation, Leguin outlines in the novel that freedom is the recognition of a person’s solitude alone that actually does transcend it.

 Leguin continues by saying that it is actually our sufferings that does bring us together and not love.

 He continues by saying that Love does not obey the mind and it turns into hate when it has been forced. 

The bond that does bind us together is beyond our choice. We are ultimately brothers. We are brothers in what we do share. 

Each us undergoes through pains alone. When we are in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we do know our brotherhood. 

We know this because we learnt it our way. We do know that there is no help coming from elsewhere to us except from within ourselves.

 There is no hand that will save us if we do not reach out our hands to help. The hands that are reached out are also empty as ours. They have nothing. They posses nothing. 

They own nothing. They are free. All we have is what we are, and what we give. Leguin continues by saying that if you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy that does follow the suffering. 

You may get pleasures but the truth remains that you will not be fulfilled. You will not be able to know what it means to come home, fulfillment is a function that deals with time. 

The search for pleasure always circular, repetitive and will always be atemporal. It has an end and then it will have to start over again. 

The good thing that exists about working with time instead of against it is that it is not actually wasted and one time you will come to realise that even pain does count.