What is suffering? What is sorrow?
Nought but the wounds in our conflict with the imperfections and limitations of life, with the elements of death and annihilation, with the powers of falsehood and hatred. The inappeasable thirst in the human heart for the fullness of existence, for complete happiness, could only be satisfied with all love and all truth, and we should need the term of all time in which to attain them.
Pain and grief are, therefore, evident proofs of the capacity for broader conditions of being; and at the same time they are the guides, pointing out what to avoid and what to seek, in order to attain this end of all desire.
This is true of all organic existence; but man alone is capable of Sorrow, a passion allied to the most exalted moods of mind, presenting to it the image of infinity, defining and educating his desires by the clear exhibition of their painful limitations, and thus revealing to his perceptions new though arduous paths, which will lead him to a loftier evolution and broader horizons.
He finds that sorrow is an initiation into the hidden mysteries of life. Through its draped portals he enters the Temple of Sadness, there to learn “the elder truths, and the secrets that cannot be spoken.” He must be bathed in the fountain of tears and be branded with the blade of adversity before he is established in the novitiate of the order of Our Mother of Sorrows.
Once admitted to her chosen band, he looks back without regret at his earlier and placid joys. His sorrow lives on within him as a new and indestructible force of character, expressing itself in added strength of will, clearness of perception, and breadth of sympathies. It has imparted to life another meaning, one more male and heroic, and yet tender, such as no pleasures can suggest or beget. The years may be paler, their flowers fewer, their grave-mounds more numerously strewn across his pathway; over them he steps with steady tread, his eye fixed on the work which he has learned is for him to do, asking neither about its rewards nor its results.
This is the spirit of those teachers and lovers of their kind, who have taken as their own the sorrows of the race; it is the spirit of those martyrs to liberty who have fallen to free their country from the yoke of tyrants; and of those sufferers for truth’s sake who have been tortured and burned by the Churches rather than live by lying recantations.
History constantly proves that the worthiest prizes of life, its loftiest virtues, and its most ennobling ambitions, are sold only at the price of suffering. The great world-religions, Buddhism and Christianity, began with proclaiming this final fact of life; and to its instinctive recognition by the experience of all mankind are due their conquests over the faiths which held out the allurements of material success and physical pleasure. The spirit of Christianity is the spirit of sadness. To it the house of mourning is ever better than the house of mirth. The Cross is the symbol of suffering; the steps are blood-stained that mount to Calvary; anguish and death are at its summit; for suffering and death are the signs, the admonitions, and the entrance to the Infinite.
Art acknowledges the same inspirations as its highest. Sad emotions attract most potently because they arise from the unplumbed depth of the soul, and suggest its limitless dimensions. They attest the words of the poet, that “Man’s grief is but his grandeur in disguise.” There is always a strange attraction about scenes of suffering; the appetite is always keen “to sup full of horrors;” our emotions are more profoundly stirred by the spectacle of pain and anguish than by that of any imaginable pleasure.
Therefore the works as well as the lives of great artists have been full of sadness. The group of the Laocoon struggling in the deadly coil of the serpent; the agony of the crucifixion; the tragedies of love and jealousy and devotion,—these have been the chosen themes of painters, sculptors and dramatists; chosen because they mark graphically the struggles of our common nature with its limits, ennobled by its ambition to leap beyond them.
Every soul knows, unconsciously and instinctively, that sorrow is the only teacher of what is most valuable in life. It alone develops fortitude, and therefore it commands the respect of all; it alone teaches sympathy, and therefore it enlists the admiration of all. No character is ripe which has not crispened under its sharp breath; none is of finest temper but those forged by its heavy blows. The noblest lives are sad; but those who have quaffed the severe joy of sorrow care little for the light froth of pleasure.
The quality of high energy is developed only by affliction. Wrestling with it, the sinews of the mind are trained. We must go forth and seek new supports in life, when we have lost those which we loved and depended upon. By such an effort, we reconcile ourselves to the loss, gain a victory over fate, strengthen our minds, and reach an air of wider freedom. The blast may beat at the gate, but all is quiet within. There is a habit of sadness which is not gloomy, which may share and admire the delights of life, but which is ever ready to meet the storms of misfortune with serenity and fortitude. Such a habit of mind lifts one above the threats and disturbances of the ceaseless struggle for existence into the companionship of ideas and powers which the poet rightly calls celestial:—
There is a ministry of grief, a compensation in calamity, a remedial property in misfortune, sweet uses in adversity, which need but to be recognized and cherished for the sting to be blunted, and what seems at first a grief without an element of alleviation, to become in time the foundation of a higher happiness. How often may one exclaim with Cleopatra, in the midst of her immeasurable losses:—
We need occasionally some violent and painful shock to waken us from the lethargy of pleasant custom, to break the shackles of agreeable and enervating habit, to tear us by the roots from the soil in which we lazily vegetate, and transplant us into fresh and richer fields. The beautiful elements in a noble character are woven together by the experience of afflictions, as the pearls which form the design of a brooch are held in place by the thread of iron on which they are strung.
The affections which are deep and pure leave behind them when they are severed by fate a happiness which is comparable to that of their enjoyment. Our sorrow for such is accompanied with an inexpressible sense of consolation, the firm and sweet assurance—“’Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.”
This compensation flows, from the nature of affection itself, because it is essentially unselfish, and ever seeking objects outside the circle of egoistic instincts. It is Love that teaches us that Joy and Sorrow are twins; and at the same time sharply defines what are the true objects of affection. Its sweet waters pour inexhaustible streams of consolation for the wounds of Fate, but not for those of Fortune. For the loss of money or rank or other mere externality it offers no such assuagement, for it deems all such losses beneath its sovereign notice. The solace for these must be sought in fortitude and courage and resignation. Only of the loss of such lower means of happiness as these is the saying of the poet true, that “A sorrow’s crown of sorrows is remembering happier things.” Rather let us say, the only sorrows we should not be ashamed of, are those which turn into joy. The griefs that embitter and harden, follow loves that are lowering.
Noble sorrow is the teacher of sympathy. The sense or the memory of our own pain awakens the desire to relieve the pain of others. Compassion and Pity are the offspring of grief. It also teaches tolerance, charity for the imperfections of others, and a knowledge of the limitations and deficiencies of our common nature, without which knowledge the successful endeavor for any of the higher aims of existence is not possible. The sense of physical suffering has been the guiding principle in the evolution of organic forms from the monad up to man. His future and higher evolution, that of his spirit-powers, will come from his mental suffering and the lessons he will draw from it.
Thus, at the end of our wide wandering in pursuit of Happiness, we look back and see that it is absent from nothing in life, not even from pain and sorrow; nay, that when all else has gone, when youth and health and fortune and love have left us, when we look forward despairingly to nought but loneliness and suffering, our very despair may prove to be divine, “begotten by the finite upon the infinite,” and from its depths we may draw a rapture unknown to common pleasures, and taste the sweet waters of a bliss which is celestial.
Who would wish to escape suffering himself, when suffering makes up so large a part of the experiences of his fellow men? Who would seek by any base flight to avoid Sorrow, when Sorrow alone can teach him the highest meaning of Life?
History is ever ready to point out how nations have been benefited by calamities, and churches by persecutions. Why not believe that the same rule holds good in our own lives?
Think what we should miss if all went smoothly with us! Without pain, we should not know pity; without danger, we should not develop courage; without receiving injuries, no chance to show forgiveness; without affliction, no opportunity for fortitude; without ingratitude, no means of proving disinterestedness; without injustice, no occasion for forbearance; without violence, no training in self-control. Really, it seems that to encounter misfortunes must be the finest fortune in life!
The surgeon restores a stiffened joint or an atrophied muscle by painful manipulations. Nothing but painful experiences will restore a sluggish mind to activity and enjoyment.
To forget even for a short time those we have loved and lost seems a lack of fealty to them; but if their influence is ever present with us to our good, our joy is a worthier memorial to them than would be endless repining.
The memory of a great sorrow obliterates the slight asperities of daily life.
The mingling of tears is a transfusion of spirit. A sorrow in common is the strongest of covenants.
The only complete satisfaction of the sense of living is its sacrifice.
The sweetest joys are consoled sorrows.