It Hurts So Good

I recently posted a five-minute AI-generated audio summary of my weekly columns, urging us to look inward for the tools needed to confront our outer crises. I then invoked Joseph Campbell’s call to “joyfully participate in the sorrows of the world.”

A few members asked, “How can we enjoy life with wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East, or take pride in America with Trump as president?”

One need not be a masochist to grasp the irony of the phrase “It hurts so good,” nor a Buddhist monk to understand that “the obstacle is the way.” To live is to struggle, and to struggle consciously is to live fully.

Global economic angst, AI and quantum disruption, climate change, Europe’s migrant crisis, Russia’s decline, China’s ascent, Israel’s moral and military reckoning, antisemitism on the far right and left, and the rising drumbeats in Asia are outward reflections of an inner unrest that has always haunted humankind.

And yet, life remains good, the seasons turn, and the arc of evolution still bends upward, if unevenly.

Prometheus stole fire from the gods and was chained to a rock for the crime of bringing light to man. Job lost everything but his faith. The Stoics taught that we do not suffer because we struggle, but because we resist the struggle.

Like the buffalo, we must face the storm to move through it. For meaning is the child of suffering, and joy its hidden twin. It hurts so good because the pain reminds us we are still alive.

— Sina.