Two Questions

“Why do good people suffer?”

It’s a question that most of us have probably asked ourselves at one time or another. Notice that the question assumes that good people shouldn’t suffer.

Maybe this assumption is partly founded on how as children we’re rewarded for good behavior and punished for bad behavior by the adults in our lives. There are rules. There are consequences. There is the idea of fairness. Even when the adults in a child’s life are actually inconsistent, unpredictable, and unfair, I’d imagine that most of them still reference ideas about the child’s having been “good” or “bad” when meting out rewards and punishments.

As adults, we learn that it’s not unusual for good people to suffer and that often the cause of their suffering is the actions – or inactions – of other people. If you removed the human causes of suffering, life on earth would look almost like heaven! We’d still be mortal, but imagine our quality of life if even a fraction of the billions of dollars that humans spend on warfare were spent instead on the environment, medical research, education…

Saints and Heroes

“Saints” and “heroes” are basically religious and secular versions of the same thing: a person who’s passionately concerned with the wider world, the bigger picture – others as they exist independently of one’s own needs and desires. In human history so far, such people have been more the exception than the rule and so we’ve needed these special words for them. Maybe good people suffer because that’s the best we can do as a species and our fatal flaw is that generation after generation we’ll never be able to produce more than a small fraction of folks who truly care about life beyond themselves.

Or maybe not. Maybe our species will learn better. But it’s becoming pretty clear that if we’re up to that, then the only way we’re going to learn is probably the hard way and that coming generations will see suffering on a massive scale.

A Second Question

“How do you stop being deeply troubled by suffering?”

This is a different question. The answer has to do with a change in perspective and a new sense of identity that’s hard to put into words. I may have posted what follows previously, but it suggests the kind of thing I mean:

Being Here

What is, is. Let me be a piece of that,
Amid the horror, explosions, shatteredness,
The strands of sense and beauty, the irresolvable whole.
WHAT IS is, and I shall be myself.
Contradictions are not resolved, yet I begin to resolve
The contradictions. I do not feel the tension any more.
The Whole is doing what it does, and I
Am wholly doing what I do.
In the crosshairs now, I see WHAT IS.
I cannot miss!
Desiring nothing for my splintered self,
I am being every inch something.
I care, but do not care.
I let go of my stake in all former aspirations;
Aspiring to nothing, I am occupied, every inch, with being something.
The worst cannot undo the act of what I am doing, and the best
Cannot change it. I am here. I am desperate, wise, strong
And live now beyond the land of my own dreams.
None of this is on my time. I resent nothing and no one.
I share in the whole world by laying claim to none of it,
Tasting what is sweet and bitter even in my own life
Like a sample off a plate in someone else’s home.
I am not here to stay and know it, and I no longer have a care
Because I wish to stay sane enough to keep caring.
Care like you died and kept on caring.
Care without a care, almost in just the way so many other events
Happen with no reflection or without meaning to,
But only because you mean it so much
That you are willing to be as heedless as it takes.
Become as ignorant of the parts and the frictions between them
As you were once so conscious of them in relation to yourself.
Be aware of being who you are in the arms or in the teeth of what is.
Forget all that might have been or might not be and there you are.