The Question We All Face
Few questions trouble us more deeply than why suffering exists. When tragedy strikes—whether in the form of personal loss, societal catastrophe, or natural disaster—we instinctively search for meaning. Why must these terrible things occur? What possible purpose could they serve?
This questioning becomes especially acute in moments of personal grief. When we lose someone we love, when illness undermines our sense of security, or when arbitrary misfortune disrupts our carefully constructed lives, the universe can seem not merely indifferent but actively hostile to our wellbeing.
Yet when we look at the broader sweep of human history, we notice something remarkable: a gradual but persistent movement toward improvement. Wars, while still occurring, are less frequent than in previous centuries. Violence, as a global phenomenon, is trending downward. Education is more widespread than ever before. Many diseases that once devastated entire populations have been eradicated or dramatically contained.
This creates a paradox. How can we reconcile the reality of individual suffering with this collective progress? Perhaps by considering a difficult possibility: that our advancement as a species is, in some sense, built upon the foundation of past suffering.
Suffering as Unwilling Martyrdom
Each person who has suffered might be understood as an unwitting martyr—someone whose pain ultimately contributes to a collective learning process. When tragedy occurs, we instinctively seek to prevent its recurrence. We develop vaccines after epidemics, improve building codes after earthquakes, enact safety regulations after industrial accidents.
This doesn’t mean that suffering is good or necessary in some absolute sense. Rather, it suggests that our response to suffering—our determination to prevent similar pain in the future—has become one of the primary engines of human progress.
This perspective doesn’t make personal grief any easier to bear. When we lose someone we love to cancer, it provides little immediate comfort to know that their suffering might contribute to medical knowledge that helps future patients. The pain remains real and immediate.
Yet on a broader scale, this pattern of learning from tragedy has produced remarkable results. As Marcus Aurelius observed: “But death certainly, and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, all these things equally happen to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse. Therefore they are neither good nor evil.”
The Neutrality of Events
The Stoics recognized something profound about the nature of events themselves: they are inherently neutral. It is our interpretation that assigns them meaning as “good” or “evil.”
This doesn’t mean that suffering isn’t real or that our pain is somehow invalid. Rather, it suggests that events themselves are simply occurrences within the vast, complex system of nature. The virus that causes illness, the weather pattern that produces a storm, the geological shifts that trigger an earthquake—these are all simply natural phenomena operating according to their own principles.
What distinguishes humans is our capacity to interpret these events, to assign them meaning, and—most importantly—to learn from them. When something threatens our existence or wellbeing, we label it as “terrible” or “evil” not because it possesses some inherent moral quality, but because it conflicts with our fundamental desire to exist and flourish.
This labeling serves an important evolutionary purpose. By identifying threats as “bad” or “evil,” we motivate ourselves to avoid them in the future. Our moral categorizations are, in this sense, sophisticated survival mechanisms.
The Fork in the Path
When tragedy strikes, we typically face two potential responses:
The first is to use the experience as an opportunity for learning and growth—to analyze what happened, understand its causes, and develop strategies to prevent similar occurrences in the future. This approach transforms suffering into a catalyst for improvement, both individually and collectively.
The second is to become consumed by the tragedy—to allow it to define us, to remain trapped in grief or resentment, to give up on the possibility of growth or renewal. This response compounds the original suffering by adding layers of psychological pain that can persist long after the initial event.
As Friedrich Nietzsche famously observed, “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.” This isn’t universally true—some tragedies can leave us permanently diminished—but it points to the human capacity for resilience and growth through adversity.
Personal Tragedies and Their Meaning
On a personal level, this perspective invites us to approach our own suffering with a particular kind of attention. Rather than simply enduring pain or asking “why me?”, we might ask: “What can I learn from this experience? How might I grow from this? What wisdom might I gain that could help others facing similar challenges?”
This doesn’t mean we should deny our grief or rush the healing process. Pain deserves to be acknowledged and experienced. But eventually, most of us reach a point where we can begin to integrate difficult experiences into our broader life narrative.
Sometimes the lesson is straightforward: after touching a hot stove, we learn to be more careful around heat. Other times, the learning is more complex and profound: a failed relationship might teach us about our own emotional patterns, or a health crisis might prompt us to reassess our priorities and values.
The key insight is that few experiences, however painful, are entirely without value if we approach them with openness and reflection.
The Misunderstanding of Happiness
Part of our struggle with suffering stems from what the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer identified as our “inborn error”—the notion that we exist primarily to be happy. As he observed: “So long as we persist in this inborn error…the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of being content.”
If we believe that constant happiness is our birthright, then every instance of suffering appears as an aberration, an injustice, or a failure of the cosmic order. The faces of the elderly often bear the marks of this disappointment—the gradual recognition that life contains more hardship than they had been led to expect.
But what if contentment were not our primary purpose? What if we are here not merely to be happy but to learn, to grow, to connect, and ultimately to contribute to the ongoing project of human development?
From this perspective, suffering becomes not an obstacle to our purpose but potentially an integral part of it—not something to be welcomed, certainly, but something that can be integrated into a meaningful life narrative.
The Practice of Acceptance
One of the most difficult and liberating realizations we can reach is that suffering is an inevitable part of existence. To deny this—to imagine that we can construct a life entirely free from pain or loss—is to embrace a dangerous illusion.
Acceptance doesn’t mean passive resignation. It doesn’t mean we should stop working to reduce suffering or prevent tragedy. Rather, it means acknowledging reality as it is, including its painful aspects, so that we can respond more effectively and with greater equanimity.
Very little is needed for a content life once we abandon the expectation of perpetual happiness. Simple pleasures, meaningful connections, purposeful activity—these modest aims are within reach even in a world where suffering exists.
The Collective Project
Perhaps the most hopeful aspect of this perspective is its recognition of our shared human project. Across time and cultures, humans have worked to reduce suffering and expand wellbeing. Each generation builds upon the knowledge and wisdom of those who came before, including the painful lessons learned through tragedy.
This doesn’t justify suffering in any ultimate sense. We would certainly prefer a world where progress could be achieved without pain. But it does suggest that our individual struggles contribute to a larger narrative of human development—that nothing ends entirely in vain.
All of us have encountered hardship, and all of us—together—are working toward a future where terrible things might be less frequent and less devastating. This isn’t merely optimism; it’s a recognition of the pattern that has characterized human history thus far.
The path is neither straight nor smooth. We make mistakes, we falter, we sometimes create new forms of suffering in our attempts to eliminate old ones. But the direction, over time, has been toward greater understanding, greater capability, and greater compassion.
In this collective journey, we find perhaps the most meaningful response to the question of why terrible things happen: they happen as part of the complex interplay of natural forces and human choices, but they need not happen in vain if we learn from them, grow through them, and use them to create a world with far less suffering.
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