The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in Death: The Final Stage of Growth
Suffering is one of the inevitabilities of being human — wealthy or poor, we all sooner or later experience it, and our suffering may be exacerbated, if not caused, by the very circumstances put in place to preclude suffering. The post-modern nanny state, with all the backing of science and technology, bureaucrats, and psychologists, is built on the lie that government action can somehow eradicate suffering.
Without suffering there would be no human development. Human creativity and achievement are often inspired by or involve suffering, as is demonstrated by examples from the sublime — an Admiral Nelson, an Edith Stein, or a Gothic cathedral — to the ridiculous — this author’s laboured attempts to keep age and weight at bay by jogging on painful knees.
In God at the Ritz, Lorenzo Albacete, a priest and physicist, reflects on the place of suffering in human life:
‘Suffering compels us to think through the great questions of life. In fact, real thought cannot occur without suffering. Creative thinking, which expands our existential horizon, is a plea to the source of meaning and sense. That is what distinguishes creative thinking from speculation.’
He goes on to explain that we do not suffer because we feel pain, we suffer because we ask “Why?”, “Why is this happening to me?” and “Why must I endure this?”. Suffering involves our self-conscious reflection on the pain we are feeling, including likely duration and future implications, and perhaps nostalgia for better times.
And the suffering “Why?” frequently ushers in the creative “What if?”, and new possibilities emerge, holding out the promise of redemption. In human experience, suffering presages redemption and new possibilities.
Redemption is perhaps the most powerful and enduring theme in Western literature, as seen in the Biblical stories of Israel, St. Paul, and the Prodigal Son, and in characters such as Sydney Carton, the dissolute barrister in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, the tumultuous Dmitri in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables
Movies like Cinderella Man, Blood Diamond, Hotel Rwanda, Crash, Grand Torino, and Groundhog Day, indicate that the post-modern malaise of meaninglessness is unlikely to smother this primeval human yearning.
The lives of nations are also often laid out in terms of suffering and redemption: slave-holding America redeemed by the immolations of the Civil War, Poland restored through the sacrifices of Solidarity, South Africa lifted up by the spirit of reconciliation espoused by Nelson Mandela, and modern Japan reconstructed through the support of her former foes and the virtues of her own ancient tradition.
A tawdry episode in British politics occurred in the 1960s when John Profumo, Secretary of State for War in Harold Macmillan’s cabinet, was found to have been using the services of the call girl, Christine Keeler. The fact that Keeler was concurrently involved with a Russian naval attaché, and this at a time when the Cold War was at its height, elevated the case from a salacious social indiscretion to a possible breach of national security.
Profumo’s political career was ruined and the affair almost certainly contributed to Macmillan’s Conservatives losing the next election. However, the disgraced aristocrat redeemed his reputation by working for charity at Toynbee Hall in the East End of London for the rest of his life. He started as a toilet cleaner and ended up as the chief fundraiser for the organisation.
Profumo bought his redemption not with money or position, but with sincere regret, humility, and a commitment to helping marginalised people. The same John Profumo who betrayed and hurt many people went on to serve and lift up many others. The difference between these two parts of his life was character, the stamp each human being puts on his own personality through the choices he or she makes.
Suffering and redemption show that human nature has the potential for both good and evil and personal fulfilment will always ultimately be determined by the free choices we make as we negotiate the challenges of this life.
Excerpted from Leaders and Misleaders by Andre van Heerden
