A single-speaker YouTube monologue (Dr. Arthur Brooks) arguing that suffering—defined as pain multiplied by resistance—is the chief teacher of life’s meaning. The speaker recommends lowering resistance (not merely eliminating pain) so suffering can become learning, growth, and generativity, and warns that a culture devoted to removing pain will erode meaning.
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. You can go to the therapy industrial complex in the Western world today to try to lower your pain, or you can try to be fully alive and lower your resistance. In so doing, what happens is that the suffering ultimately declines because you've turned it into learning, you've turned it into generativity, you've turned it into growth. 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 to 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. What you find is that 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.
