Suffering

It is only natural to do all we can to avoid things that cause us to suffer, or to mitigate it when suffering is unavoidable.  Yet when it is unavoidable it can (usually in retrospect) be viewed as a great turning point in a life that had been, by contrast, shallow or inconsequential.  Suffering can be transformational. 

 

In my faith the Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., while incarcerated for months in a cold and cramped jail on trumped-up charges, received this revelation (quoted in part):

            “If thou art called to pass through tribulation; if thou art in perils among false brethren; if thou art in perils among robbers; if thou art in perils by land or by sea…if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers … [or] into the deep (water) … know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.  The Son of Man (Jesus the Christ) hath descended below them all.  Art thou greater than He?”  (Doctrine and Covenants 122: 5-8)

Bestselling author David Brooks in his 2015, The Road to Character, writes: 

            “Most people shoot for happiness but feel formed through suffering. / People we call deep have almost always endured a season of suffering, or several such seasons. / For most of us, there is nothing intrinsically noble about suffering … suffering is sometimes just destructive. / When it is not connected to some larger purpose beyond itself, suffering shrinks or annihilates people.  When it is not understood as a piece of a larger process, it leads to doubt, nihilism, and despair. / But some people can connect their suffering to some greater design. / It is not the suffering itself that makes all the difference, but the way it is experienced.” 

Mr. Brooks cited Abraham Lincoln as one who suffered through his psychological depression and the pain of conducting a civil war but “who emerged with the sense that Providence had taken control of his life, that he was a small instrument in a transcendent task.”  Many people, say Brooks, “don’t come out healed; they come out different. 

Orson Whitney has written,

            “No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted.  It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude, and humility.  All that we suffer, all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our character, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, makes us more tender and charitable, … and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation that we came here to acquire which will make us more like our Father…in Heaven.”

 

Every parent knows that suffering can be not only physical (as a birthing mother knows as she goes, sometimes, down into the valley of the shadow of death to bring forth new life) but also vicarious as they see their (physically) grown children make bad choice after bad choice that leads to their childrens’ sufferings.

But it can be for us, depending on how we view it and use it, as author Sheldon Vanauken (and C. S. Lewis) said, ‘A Severe Mercy’ because it enables growth of character that could come in no other way.

Preaching to the Choir

It occurs to me that anyone who would read these missives (or continue after reading their first couple of offerings) would be pretty decent human beings in their own right and not need these preachments.  But then I thought that if this were the case, it might still be nice to be reinforced or validated in their own positions.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that my observations on life and living, or even those I quote, are all “pools of living water” in the “parched ground and barren deserts” of our social environment.  But sometimes they are a small draught of refreshment.

Yet I would say that all I have written I stoutly believe or that I personally have experienced to my betterment the application of the true principles about which I have written .

Among the observations that come to mind today are these:

·        Find your ‘giants’ –great role models—even among the elderly and common acquaintances and learn from them.  

·        Read from among the ‘best books’ and look for learning.

·        Keep the long view always before you. 

·        Don’t let your life get caught up or bogged down in ‘the thick of thin things.’  Examine yourself every day to see how you are doing.

·        Try somehow, some way, every day to make someone else’s life better or brighter. 

·        Be grateful and express it in prayer, in person, on paper.   

What’s Happening?

When I was young we used to ask that question as an informal greeting. We didn’t give the answer tendered by our friend much thought.  Now, as we have grown older we ask that question with consternation. America is beginning to look nothing like the America of the recent past.

America is in the throes of a demographic transformation. Huge generation gaps have opened up in our political and social values, our economic well-being, our family structure, our racial and ethnic identity, our gender norms, our religious life, and our technology use.  Our present is marked by the most striking social, racial, and economic shifts the country has seen in a century.

Today’s Millennials—many do not like to be called that—are well-educated in terms of technical expertise but find when they step off the campus they are unemployed or quickly become underemployed (so they think because of an increasing entitlement mentality) and are finding they are becoming the first generation in American history to have a lower standard of living than their parents. Meantime, our researchers say that currently over 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every single day, most of them not as well prepared financially as they’d hoped. These generational changes are contributive in polarizing our politics, putting stresses on our social safety net, and presenting our elected and religious leaders with a daunting challenge: How to keep faith with the old without bankrupting the young and starving the future.

Every aspect of our demography is being fundamentally transformed.  Our population is rapidly becoming non-white, and our median age will soon edge above 40—both unprecedented milestones in our nation and in other ‘developed’ nations.  It is not so with the ‘developing’ nations.  With heavy immigration flowing from the less ‘advantaged’ nations into the U.S. we are poised to remain relatively young but increasingly poor.  It is said that if we can get our spending priorities and generational equities in order many experts say we can keep our economy second to none. Successfully addressing these issues will certainly help. But the issue is not all economic.

It takes more than that.  We need to get our moral, religious and social values back on track to mend the breech.  We have to replace the foundational pillars that have been yanked out if we hope to get out of free-fall. 

 

When I went to school in the 1950’s and ‘60’s we talked about a ‘Social Contract,’   an age-old compact—parents (must) take care of children and children (should) take care of parents.  Every society and each family is a covenant between the generations—I care for you when you’re young; you care for me when I’m old.  Support flows toward need.  There needs to be generational fairness—it is not all ‘take’ and no ‘give’—and not all one way.  We have a shared destiny.

All generations see the world through a lens shaped by the ups and downs of life. Some gain wisdom from the experiences—of their own and those who preceded them.  The young hopefully will appreciate that experience—the experience of their elders—has value.

Our (my) generation’s last big mission might be to help right the ship of state for today’s young.  What will our children’s inheritance really be?  A Greek proverb says that societies become great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in.   Cultural expectations enforced by custom, convention, peer pressure or conscience are cracking.  We need to fill the cracks with the cement of moral virtue—individual, family, civic, generational—that has been chipped away.

The future is now.