The 4 Questions We All Have to Answer About Suffering

Religion seems to have a monopoly on Suffering but the rest of us need answers to these core questions about suffering.

Photo by Yaopey Yong on Unsplash

Search the word “Suffering” on Youtube and the results surprised might surprise you.

When I did it, the first result was a video 59-minute video called “How To Suffer Well” from a Christian Pastor named Rich Wilkerson Jr. The second video was from a female pastor from a different Christian Church. The third was a roundtable discussion at a university whose logo featured a cross.

I started thumbing through the first page only to find that almost every result had some religious affiliation. It wasn’t just Christian, either. There was Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Buddhist. There was Ekhart Tolle, who’s non-affiliated but draws heavily from Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity. There were clips from my favorite endurance athlete, David Goggins, talking about suffering, but even he is a Catholic.

I don’t know what I expected but I was surprised that the only people talking about it were religious folks talking to other religious folks. I expected more people to be talking about suffering — what it is, what causes it, what to do about it — because suffering doesn’t care about your religious…