Excerpt from Dr. Jennifer Clark's book Suffer

Without suffering and death, a human life cannot be complete.

— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

At the edge of mortality, life is really alive. The minutiae are wiped away and truth comes to bear. The realm of death, historically relegated to our philosophical and religious traditions, is now opening its doors to the scientific tradition. With more and more of us engaging with the meaning in mortality, the line between life and death becomes very blurry, at times, obliterated.

Abraham Maslow framed this appreciation of death as mortality salience, in that he states:

“It is quite clear that we are always suffering from this cloud that hangs over us, this fear of death. If you can transcend the fear of death, which is possible — if I could now assure you of a dignified death instead of an undignified one, of a gracious, reconciled, philosophical death … your life today, at this moment, would change. And the rest of your life would change. Every moment would change.”

So why wait? From this viewpoint, death is the ultimate creative experience of a human life. In reimagining its purpose, we can begin to understand suffering’s invitation to the transcendent. While alive, we are undoubtably subject to the moment-to-moment whims of chaos. Our fundamental human needs become urgently compromised, several may vie for our attention, and our suffering motivates us toward a fork in the road — one that leads to unknown change, the other circling back around to the familiarity of what is known. Signaling the different choices we have in our lives, the sufferings clue us in to which choice is most creative and pro-developmental.

Like the Japanese art of wabi-sabi, which loosely translates to the attentive melancholy of finding the beauty in impermanence, the power of suffering unifies the dissolution of loss with the creation of something entirely new. However, suffering suffers a problem of language. It’s too obscure and, like death, it feels taboo.

We are Homo sapiens sapiens, the man who knows he knows. This human capability “to know” comes with profound upsides and equally disturbing downsides. The upside, unlike any other species that we are aware of, is that humans are afforded the abilities to imagine, to make meaning, and to create all on a basis of beliefs and values. The equally painful downside, unlike any other species that we are aware of, is that humans are afforded the abilities to imagine, to make meaning, and to create all on a basis of beliefs and values. The price “to know” is suffering.

When we choose to embrace our suffering, we are rewarded with creative capacities from which the death of our former self gives rise to one wholly (or holy, you choose!) new. Living in presence, actualized, new needs arise, old needs recall our attention, and the cycle begins again. Through the eyes of death, we come to understand transcendence in its ultimate form while suffering shows us how to experience transcendence in the everyday.

Don’t waste your suffering.

Excerpted from Suffer. by Jennifer K. Clark, MD.