Arthur C. Brooks argues that suffering is how we learn what our lives mean. He defines suffering as pain multiplied by resistance, and traces his own meaning through his mother's death, business failure, illness, and fear. When people describe what makes their lives matter, he says, they always point to their hardest moments.
One of the greatest ways for you to miss the meaning of your life is for you to try to avoid your suffering. The Buddhists have this math. Suffering is pain multiplied by resistance. The most important teacher of the meaning of your life is your suffering. And one of the greatest ways for you to miss the meaning of your life is for you to try to avoid your suffering. Give me an example. Nobody ever said, I really figured out what I was made of, that we could be Chin Ibiza now. They talked about when my mom died, when I almost lost my business, when I flunked out of college, when I got really sick, when I was truly scared and I made my way through it. When I understood, when I went through that suffering, was my teacher about who I am as a person and the meaning of my life. In large groups of people, you find that when you ask them to talk about the meaning of their life, they always talk about their terrible times. They always talk about their suffering. Always. That's the way it is. And if we have a culture that tries to get rid of pain, you have a culture that gets rid of meaning.
