System #19: Embrace Suffering

We have always thought of suffering as a bad thing. We've always longed to end suffering, for us, and especially our children. When we see others suffering, we are moved in compassion to help them. Yet, "life...," as the great prophet Siddhartha Gautama told us, "...is suffering." We cannot, however hard we try, evade it. Unless, that is, we are willing to lose our attachments. All of them. The attachment we have to comfort, our possesions, including the attachment we have to our very own lives.

Every time we embrace suffering we make ourselves stronger. Suffering costs us, and that cost, that loss, slowly helps us overcome our attachments. As we release our attachments, we allow ourselves to have the impact we are supposed to have on this world. We slowly slip out of the chains we've built around us.

Life is suffering
- The Buddha (Siddartha Gautama)

Siddartha Gautama

Siddhartha Gautama, born into a royal family in India around the 6th century BCE, lived a sheltered life of luxury. His father, hoping Siddhartha would become a great ruler, kept him isolated from the harsh realities of life. He gave him everything. One day, becoming curious about what lay beyond the palace walls and asked to go out to see. His father prepared a grand parade, and made sure that nothing bad could be seen during the parade. Despite his father's best attempt at hiding the suffering of the world, Siddartha encountered the Four Sights: an old man (age), a sick man (disease), a corpse (death), and an ascetic monk (renunciation). These experiences shattered his sheltered world and revealed to him the inevitability of suffering. Siddhartha realized that neither his wealth nor power could shield him from it. His sheltered life could no longer please him, or hold him. He resolved to find a solution to the human condition of suffering (dukkha) and left behind his royal life, family, and material comforts in search of the truth.

For six years, Siddhartha roamed India and followed every spiritual practice he could find from every great teacher. He practiced advanced meditation and attained thoughtless states but that relief was temporary. He practiced extreme asceticism, believing that self-denial would bring him enlightenment, but his approach left him weak and unfulfilled. He practiced Pranayama (Breath Control), and while he gained insights, it wasn't the liberation he was seeking. Eventually, he realized that neither indulgence nor extreme asceticism would lead to true wisdom. Instead, he discovered what he called the Middle Way, a path of moderation between self-indulgence and self-denial.

Wall-E

When I imagine the world that people want to create when they complain about suffering, I think of the world brought to life in the movie Wall-E which takes place in a distant future where we've trashed our planet and live in a spaceship.

In it, we humans, now overweight and largely immobile, are entirely absorbed in the large screens attached to our floating chairs. These screens display entertainment, advertisements, and interactions, keeping us perpetually distracted. Additionally, we are continuously served food and drinks through tubes and robotic arms, making it unnecessary for us to move or engage with our surroundings. We are isolated in our own virtual worlds, disconnected from each other and our environment, despite living in close quarters on the this spaceship. In short, we, through technology, have erased our sufferings, yet we still somehow find reasons to grumble.

Aside from sounding oddly similar to our current trajectory, seeking to end suffering never quells the issue. By attempting to remove the burden of walking, we coddle our bodies and allow our bodies to atrophy. We make ourselves weak, ultimately leading us back to suffering. The physical organism that we are requires movement, it requires effort, it requires struggle, it requires suffering. We get stronger from it.

A Compassionate Mother

Imagine a mother, who, having seen other kids fall, and knick themselves, resolves to always keep her child safe. She, having seen how uncompassionate other mothers were by forsaking their kids to the sufferings of life, takes absolute care of him. She goes so far as to always carry him on her back.

"How could they let their children play outside and allow them to get hurt?" she questions incredulously.

Year, after year, he grows, and her burden gets heavier, yet year after year, she continues to carry him. She looks down on all the other mothers who, by now, no longer carry their children.

After a long childhood, the child reaches 18, he's now, in her eyes, ready to start his life. The mother, teary eyed, lowers him from her back to allow his new life to begin. His legs, however, haven't gotten a chance to be used and buckle under his weight. His mind, not having had to navigate the world to attain his desires feels overwhelmed and confused. He matured dependent on his mother...whatever can he do without her?

The mother, while attempting to be kind, compassionate, and nurturing unwittingly stole the suffering from her child. She stole his growth

While this example is dramatic, it's there to illustrate a point. Suffering is shown in many perspectives; The mother, having to carry her adult child. The child being locked in a prison on her back. The ultimate release of someone unforged by the trials and tribulations of a childhood where mistakes were made and were navigated with the support of people who'd been there, done that. The mother, while attempting to be kind, compassionate, and nurturing unwittingly stole the suffering from her child. She stole his growth. The muscle growth that should have happened in his legs were added to hers. The mental tax of having to navigate conversations, or new environments weren't replicated to her child...but remained hers.

In how many areas of our lives does our kindness actually kill? Where are you supporting someone and, unknowingly, stealing their ability to support themselves?

Antifragile

Nassim Taleb said it best when he attempted to find a word to describe a system that gets better the more adversity it has encountered. We all know what to call things that break when hit; like a mirror. We call it fragile. Or things that never change no matter how hard we hit them; we might call them robust, sturdy, durable. But when we think of our muscles, they aren't fragile, but they break. They, therefore, can't be called robust. They have an uncanny ability to be damaged, and grow stronger. He noticed a new word was needed, and so coined the term "antifragile."

He noticed how every biological system is antifragile, and every man made system is either robust or fragile. The problem is that robust is the same thing as fragile; once that maximum load is reached...they both shatter. All of our systems require human intervention to fix the damage, and through our ingenuity, we make the systems stronger but they rarely do that on their own. We only buy ourselves time until life finds a way to overcome that new maximum load. Like walls on a city, the enemy will always find a way, no matter how big, or wide the walls are made. The bigger the walls, the longer the time horizon to collapse, the more complacent we become and the more valuable the reward becomes for gaining entry.

In the early 1990s, a highly ambitious ecological research project called Biosphere 2 was designed to study the possibilities of self-sustaining ecosystems across seven distinct biomes. Interestingly, scientists noticed that the trees in this biosphere would fall much earlier than trees in the wild. It turned out that trees needed the wind to strengthen them as they grew. Since the biosphere, while it had air circulation, didn't have near the level of winds found in the wild. This lack of wind, this lack of resistance against the trees, bred weak trees.

Piggy Bank Analogy

I've always loved practice. Practicing anything. I love the simplicity of doing something and getting better at it. It's a struggle, but the rewards are amazing. When I was a soccer coach, strangely enough, I coached many kids who weren't as big of fans of this concept as I was. They'd complain when we'd run laps, or do sit-ups, or do a drill that wasn't their strength...or worse...having to do the drill again since we couldn't get it right. The crazy thing was that when asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, they'd tell you they wanted to be a pro soccer player.

What?!

Attempting to remediate this thinking and imbue them with a little bit of my joy of practice, I came up with an analogy. After practice, when everyone was beat, I asked them how tired they were.

"We're exhausted," they'd tell me. "I need to sleep" another would add

"What happens when you wake up?" I asked.

"We'll feel better"

"Exactly. Everyday you have a certain amount of energy; we can think of it as a certain amount of money. Since tomorrow we get that full amount of money and we lose any money we haven't spent from today, spending it is actually good."

They looked at me puzzled.

I asked them, "if we run sprints right now, what will happen tomorrow?"

"We'll be tired...", one sighs.

I chuckle, "No. What will happen?" I asked again.

"We'll be faster!" another yells excitedly.

"Exactly! By spending your energy, your money, on making yourselves better, you make yourselves stronger. You get to put that money in the piggy bank. This is energy/money that you'll get to carry over to tomorrow."

"That means tomorrow we'll be rich!" the same kid exclaims.

"Exactly! Imagine if you do that everyday? Each day we practice, each day we sprint, or dribble, do sit-ups or anything hard, you are making ourselves richer tomorrow."

From then on, we rarely complained about hard things and if we did, they'd remind each other we wanted to be rich tomorrow. It was the cutest.

Who Do You Want To Become?

We've often heard the question, "what do you want out of life?" Everyone has an answer to this, we all want to be either famous, rich, fit, admired, enlightened, have a good job, or like our little friend, a pro soccer player. We're good at dreaming, but we're not very good at getting there. We'd learn what people thought of themselves, but not really who they were. Instead, Mark Manson started asking this:

"Show me what you're willing to struggle for, and I'll show you who you'll become."
- Mark Manson

He started asking people what pains they were willing to incorporate in their lives. If you wanted to be fit, but you didn't like the struggle of exercising, it didn't take a genius to figure out you wouldn't become fit. Instead, if you told me you enjoyed the struggle of waking up early to go to the gym, I could easily deduce your future. I could, through your suffering, tell you what you'd become. Our little soccer friend, through a change in perspective, now had a chance of becoming a pro soccer player!

This concept of consciously adding suffering back into our lives allows us to take back control. Since, as we've deduced above, life is suffering, we can either choose our sufferings or they we'll be given to us by life itself. As we suffer, we add money to our piggy banks, we build up our resistance to stressors. Just like the trees in the wild that can grow much larger and handle substantially higher winds than the ones sheltered in the Biosphere.

As we build up our resistance, the threshold for something to be felt as suffering will be raised. We make our future easier. Here are a couple ideas to bring this down to earth:

• Fasting (or eating a little less than your apetite everyday) - this will tax your system to use what you have better (as well as having substantial anti-aging effects) [read System #2: One Rule Diet]
• Hot Saunas, Ice Baths, or Cold Showers - trains your system to be able to self-regulate your temperature.
• Exercise (High Intensity Interval Training) - Sweating is so good for you. Movement is so good for you. Your joints, since they don't have blood vessels get their nutrients from movement. The energy demand of HIIT make your body have to create new mitochondria. [read System #1: Physically Fit, the Lazy Way]
• Confrontation - Having the nerve to confront things that you don't like (in a civil way) builds up your tolerance for social and emotional confrontation allowing you to express and maintain your boundaries.
• Boredom - Breeds creativity, allows you moments to feel what's happening in your life. Allows you to sense trouble (physically, socially, and spiritually) before you've been on autopilot for too long. [read System #8: Dopamine Detox]
• Not Using Money - Builds up patience, increases social collisions which can lead to unforeseen beneficial encounters.
• Giving to Others - More than money, something you value. Aside from feeling great, and building relationships, it also helps you train for loss.
• Learning - Learning something completely new builds up neurons strengthening what you already know and allowing you to make more connections in the future.
• Trust - Opens you up to deceit, or abuse, but weeds out the bad apples in your life making room for the good ones. [read System #14: Trust]

Each one of these items could just be taken as an experiment (if not a lifestyle), regardless, they can teach you a lot. As one of my friends loves to say, "contrast brings clarity." Allow yourself a chance to feel the contrast. Stretch yourself, step outside your box; it'll never be the same.

Conclusion

Being uncomfortable, in any sense, will train a part of you. You are the person for which the struggles in your life are a struggle for.

You are the person for which the struggles in your life are a struggle for.

Let me say it another way. Imagine you had to run a mile for P.E. If you don't enjoy running a mile, that would be a struggle. But imagine you were Eliud Kipchoge (one of the greatest long distance runners in history), a mile would be nothing as he typically runs 17-20 miles a day!

Or imagine you're in a relationship that isn't working out for you, yet you're still together. You're together because you haven't trained your ability to tolerate social confrontation. You're afraid to break up, to make him/her mad yet you probably know many people whom could, easily. For better or worse.

However, we shouldn't only seek self-denial. As Buddha said, we should seek the Middle Way; moderation, even from moderation. If you're intermittent fasting, allow yourself one whole day to eat. Take time off your routine. Take time off... period. Enjoy the fruits of your work. Enjoy the fruits of your suffering, the fruits of your labor.

As we build up our tolerance for suffering, as we remove our attachments to comfort, we unconsciously remove ways we can be controlled. As we remove ways to be controlled, we allow ourselves the freedom of swimming against the current of culture. We allow ourselves the freedom to stand up to injustice. We allow ourselves the freedom to break the chains that have enslaved generations before us. We take back the authority to, by our actions, create the world we all actually want, not just perpetuate the world we were too afraid to resist.