I have watched in admiration, over and over, as students of all ages use clear thinking to their great advantage. Developing the courage needed for honest introspection emboldens these philosophers to take on the world. Beautiful transformations are born by both the exposure to new ideas as well as the encouragement generated in heartfelt discussion. The most poignant metamorphosis to witness by far is the newfound, sturdy willingness to face long-buried hurt. Sores that have never healed are stripped open so that the poison can spill out at long last.
Examples of such heroism fill my heart. Upon reading Camus' novel The Plague, my student from Zimbabwe wept in the parking lot after class, voicing for the first time his struggle for survival as a little boy, with no family and no name, begging on streets crowded with danger. Over the course of the next few days, he let the brutal memories flood his adult self. He then stood up from a garden bench and chose to look his tormentors in the eye and stride past their memory; most importantly, for him, he was able to forgive himself. At the beginning of every fall semester, unasked, I arrived in the class that he and I had shared to find him sitting in his customary seat among new students. A merry man with a good life, he came to share his story with fledging philosophers he would never know, but who would always remember him. Another student's study of Kant's moral imperative, a rule that forbids using another person merely as means to an end, took her back twenty-five years to pain that she could finally confront. Indeed, she used Kant as a means to change forever and for the better her family dynamic. I can't enumerate the students who have found inspiration in the Dalai Lama's unswerving insistence on the necessity of forgiveness, most especially for the well-being of the one doing the forgiving; they can let go of resentment, traveling lighter, and press on. Simone de Beauvoir gives other students permission to express their simmering, closeted grief, pain stemming from cruelty inflicted upon them based on insidious genderstereotypes. "Do Ask, Do Tell," these emotional survivors, female and male, exclaim. And, oh, think about the third grader whose study of the Stoics "made her not so scared anymore when she hears gunfire at night."
Hurt overwhelms...when you are powerless, small, silenced, or afraid. Innocence and trust flee. The very thought of the possibility of full, free, loving living evaporates. For some, the hurt is unbearable; inner and/or outer forces are too great to bear. But for those who can summon the grit to go back and tackle the suffering at its source, life preservers await. In Herman Hesse's novel Siddhartha, this man, whom the reader has followed from his youth into old age, finds the answer to his lifetime spent running in search of peace: "Everything that was not suffered to the end and finally concluded, recurred, and the same sorrows were undergone," Sidddhartha realizes. Students take solace in this story of a man's quest for understanding that can be bought only by his suffering. The loss of his son's love is Siddhartha's unbearable wound "that smarted for a long time." His wisdom lies in allowing his unrequited love to break his heart. Siddhartha learns that "every sin already has grace in it." His despair contains the seeds of joy. The pain wears gossamer thin and healing pokes through.
When I think of the lesson taught by Hesse's Siddhartha, I imagine standing under a waterfall. The cold, bracing water of suffering saturates me completely and is plenty powerful, but I can stay with it and, with time, standing tall under the spray gets easier. And, amazingly, the very same water serves to cleanse me as well. Soon it doesn't hurt; the water simply refreshes me.
Photograph by Betsy Dalgliesh. Last year, in an hour-long interview on NPR that welcomed listeners' comments, the last caller asked: "Don't you think suffering plays its part in all this, in the effort to understand what matters in the long run, what gives life meaning?" My answer was an immediate, very quiet "yes" to the very tender tone of voice in which this not-really-a-question was asked. The show's host quickly asked me to give an example from my life of a time that suffering was my teacher. I replied that my father's death taught me, among other things, the meaning of perspective. This lesson came more directly, more convincingly than words packaged in any philosophical theory could convey. I cannot imagine the burden of not entering that suffering all the way at that time. It was a heavy waterfall; but, fortunately, I wasn't alone or little.
And here's the thing. I've been on the road a lot recently, driving in silence with my dog, and my thoughts keep drifting back to this topic. I now see so vividly that the one thing, in my teaching experience, that every single suffering child or adult has shared is the deadening conviction that he or she is all alone with their hidden hurt. That is the barrier to moving with life; isolation seals in the festering sore. But I hear all the different voices with varied stories echoing the same craving for release; pain is pain. Knowing that we're all in the soup together...that's a start, isn't it? I can count on what happens in philosophical dialogue when one person is moved to relate a philosopher's theory to personal experience: Heads pick up with a start and a shocked response of "that happened to you, too?" reverberates in the room. "I've always felt that way, too!" This sudden realization of solidarity swings my heart out of my chest. Something happens to everybody!
So, in the past few weeks, I learned an old lesson again, thinking about my students and Siddhartha. When suffering knocks, answer right away. Meet it at the door. Stay with it. When it's time, kick it out.
I wish Mary Oliver had a penny for every time I have read her poem "Wild Geese" to classes, at philosophy club gatherings, and to myself. "Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine." No matter who you are, you are part of "the family of things," Oliver comforts...and invites us.
