Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, the protagonist of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” lived a life of suffering. He was imprisoned in a Russian labor camp after being persecuted for his ideas. Cold, famine, arbitrary rules, crooked guards. Everywhere he looked from the moment he opened his eyes to the moment he closed them, he saw inequality and pain and terror. And yet, he still closed his eyes each night.
What does the way Ivan endured his suffering say about life?
The 19th century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, once explained, “To live is to suffer.” The Canadian clinical psychologist and professor, Jordan B. Peterson, in his academic studies and his private clinical practice, he has concluded the same as Nietzsche: “Life is suffering,” he says.
The great physicist and mathematician (and the literal genius who created an entire branch of mathematics on a dare), Isaac Newton, once said that each generation stands on the shoulders of the “giants” of its predecessors, and both Nietzsche and Peterson are standing on millenia of this idea: living and suffering are inseparable. If you choose to live, then you choose to suffer – and, make no mistake, living is a choice, therefore, so is suffering. If you are reading this, you have chosen to live, and, by extension, you have chosen to suffer. More importantly, though, is whether there is meaning in the suffering.
There must be, right? Is there meaning in the suffering? If so, how is that meaning determined? Can someone else determine this meaning for you? Or must this meaning be derived from yourself? Can anyone fulfill your life’s purpose?
Whew…this is what I thought about while I digested Ivan Denisovich’s plight.
Solzhenitsyn once remarked that life, essentially, is a prison, though he used this as a strong metaphor based on his experiences as a prisoner of Stalin’s ruthless gulags in the 1950’s. But he flipped the idea of prison on its head in a bold act of intellectual and spiritual defiance when he said, “Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”
That quote is astonishing, given its context. Solzhenitsyn, thumbing his nose at an insanely frightening tyrant, Josef Stalin, embraced the suffering of life, accepting life as an extended period of suffering, as if it truly were a prison from which one must intellectually and spiritually break. “The maturity of the human soul,” indeed!
What is it about those who know suffering, either intellectually or through firsthand account, and what can they teach us about how we might handle that inescapable aspect of life?
An ancient Indian story about suffering goes like this: Siddhartha Gautama was a prince. He was secluded from the world outside of his palace, but he snuck out with a driver who gave him a tour of the town outside the palace walls. Siddhartha shivered at the sight of an old man, his wrinkles deep and his skin loose on his bones. He asked why that man looks like that and the driver says if he was lucky he will experience the same. They went on until they came across a sick man and the young man asked what was wrong with that person to which the driver said that is a periodic affliction everyone must endure. They went on and Siddhartha saw a body on the side of the road. It was still, unmoving. There was no life and Siddhartha insisted on an explanation. The driver said that this is the inescapable fate of us all.
Our protagonist here, he learned that life was a series of moments defined by the level of suffering one goes through. It was this story that set Siddhartha on path to become the Buddha. There were three sources of suffering: painful experiences, constant change, and the truth that suffering exists.
Could there be a fourth? I wonder.
As I read “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” I began thinking of the last century. It was defined by one Marxist failure after another, and the author of this novel was just one of its millions of real-world sufferers. My heart broke for these characters, not simply because they endured subzero temperatures with tattered boots and a severe lack of food, but because they were forced to endure it.
According to Buddhism, Ivan Denisovich (and Solzhenitsyn, by proxy) certainly endured painful experiences and actually lived the truth of suffering, but was there another source of his suffering? Was there another source of suffering that hundreds of millions of other human beings endured throughout the last century under Marxist experiments?
Check this out…
“Mankind are greater gainers of suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.” Okay, so John Stuart Mill, the intellectual beneficiary of liberty-minded giants like John Locke, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson, wasn’t the easiest to understand, but it was Mill who answered my questions. We are stronger when we accept each other’s ideas of what makes our own lives better, allowing each to pursue their own paths to happiness and prosperity, than by forcing others to live as we would want them to live.
That last part is my answer: “…than by forcing others to live as we would want them to live.”
Solzhenitsyn was forced to live Stalin’s vision of Marx’s utopia. It didn’t matter if Solzhenitsyn and his countrymen and -women agreed with Stalin in exactly the same way that North Koreans adhere to the arbitrary rule that all males of a certain age must get the same haircut as Kim-Jong Un. Control over another is power, but it is not freedom. What can Solzhenitsyn, North Koreans, or even I do to ease the suffering that life brings with it, regardless of the level of suffering? To what end does suffering extend?
The only answer I can think of is: Your suffering extends as far as you allow it to extend.
And here is when we can invite Nietzsche, Peterson, and the Buddha back into the conversation.
Nietzsche, are you still there? “To live is to suffer,” you once said, but there was more. Should we choose to live, then “to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.”
Peterson would follow that up with, “We are on this Earth to suffer. So learn to suffer like a man.” He also very pointedly says, “Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak and everything else is huge, complex and overwhelming.” So, what can you do about it, Dr. Peterson? What can Ivan do about it?
Well, it would be easy for someone like our “hero” Ivan Denisovich to simply give up. What is the point of living such a life? Is the suffering worth it? How can one find meaning in a life of deep suffering?
To those who wonder how to find meaning in a life of suffering, Dr. Peterson says: “Well, here’s a meaning: Work hard to eliminate horrible pain.” I’ll add, not just in yourself, but others. Find one person who you might alleviate a measure of pain and do that. Ease his or her suffering and your life will have meaning. To those who still counter with, “Life is meaningless,” Peterson responds: “Tell that to the child who is suffering from brain cancer.” To the nihilist who questions who will remember our lives, he says, “Your nihilism is useless in the face of suffering, so abandon it. If you want an orientation to your life, work on reducing suffering.”
If you want a direction in your life, pursue a path that eases suffering in others. And you will also receive the benefits of your life’s work.
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