Suprise inside
Saturday, December 12 2009
I was at a church meeting last week – because I’m in one of those denominations that has lots and lots of committees – and we were talking about spiritual development. One person said it only really happens in times of hardship, to which I reacted a little too strongly for the context. Let me just say that reflecting the light of baby Jesus is rather hard when your most comfortable mode of communication is acid sarcasm. In the church meeting, I had to backtrack; here on my blog, I can press ever forward.
So anyway: about hardship and spiritual growth. This is a fairly common attitude in the church, and even among non-believers vis personal development. The idea is that you only ever grow when forced to, when conditions require you to. The jocks at the gym will tell you, “That which does not kill you makes you stronger” – but give them the choice between dengue fever and shooting up juice, and see what happens.
The complement to this idea is that suffering is at some level beneficial, because it forces you to undergo the growth that you otherwise wouldn’t. In religion, this is often expressed as God ‘choosing’ a person to suffer to make them a better person. Elsewhere, it’s just a latent prejudice that suffering builds character, or whatever.
This meme, such as it is, needs to die. And not just die, but die a painful death – a flaming spike through the chest, or drawn and quartered, or maybe even untreated cancer.
Yes, suffering sometimes produces growth, and a number of people have discovered their better selves amid suffering. But not everyone who suffers makes this discovery, and I would say not even most. There is a surfeit of books and movies about people who triumphed over adversity, and learned important life lessons in the process – but you never see books or movies about people who were pricks before adversity and stayed pricks afterward.
For the patient, this creates tremendous pressure to find transcendance in illness. I’ve seen plenty of folks scramble and scurry to make something – anything – of their illness, like disease is a giant box of stale, wormy Cracker Jack with a surprise buried somewhere inside. These days, I think a lot of people are surprised to find out that illness, deep down, really is just pain and suck – and then despair.
But worse are the people who simply tell themselves they are better just for having gone through suffering – even though they’re still ginormous pricks. The meme is so widespread that people latch on to it just as soon as they’re diagnosed, without ever really undergoing the personal struggle that actually makes you a better person. And God forbid you discover in your experience something that doesn’t mesh with the narrative. (Along those lines, let me recommend again Barbara Ehrenreich’s excellent essay, Welcome to Cancerland.)
I want to think I have grown as a result of my illness. I am certainly more deliberate in how I live my life, and that’s a good thing. But I also have to admit that the times when I have suffered the most are also the times when I have been the most selfish, irresponsible, and unresponsive to the people I love. I am not a better person when suffering, and I doubt I am that much of a better person for having suffered.
Moreover, now that I am relatively well, I have a lot of energy that I can devote to self-improvement. I want to use some of the energy for spiritual development, and I think it’s ridiculous to suggest that I must wait instead for more suffering. In fact, what got me into trouble was suggesting that I might encourage the woman who makes my life so joyful to start beating me, so I can suffer and therefore grow; but if you really believe suffering is beneficial, does it matter what the suffering looks like?
Illness – and suffering more generally – doesn’t make you a better person. You can, in response to suffering, make yourself a better person. But you can also make yourself a better person even without suffering. In fact, in some ways it’s a lot easier – but you might not have a sense of urgent need to do so. Meanwhile, telling ourselves that suffering makes us better people makes it easier for us to ignore suffering in others – and that, as a matter of fact, makes us worse.
