About Suffering
Part of suffering is the useless urge to announce that you’re suffering.
There is no other way to say it: I’m suffering. Just to say “I suffer”
helps.
I read somewhere, “we become lyrical when we suffer.”
Happiness is suffering for the right reasons.
First-order suffering is second-order happiness.
You have to suffer for beauty? Because you have to suffer.
We pride ourselves on a high quality of suffering.
Turgenev was born in 1818 in the Province of Orel, and suffered
during his childhood from a tyrannical mother.
In the past their suffering was less absurd.
The problem is, everything’s worse. Like, paper or plastic? We’re all
still going to die suffering.
I value being alone with my thoughts, but it’s weird to say, “This
thing that makes us suffer less, we have to stop doing it.”
Isn’t it kind of the point of culture to assuage our feeling needless
and alone?
How does one suffer “gladly,” exactly?
At least the rich get to suffer in comfort.
It makes the life feel longer. Live to suffer another day.
One’s past suffering can be a great source of comfort. A torturous
luxury. Velvet upholstery.
Suffering is happiness, after forty minutes of desolate shuffling. The
point is, life is suffering.
About suffering, no one is ever wrong.
Copyright Credit: Elisa Gabbert, "About Suffering.” Copyright © 2019 by Elisa Gabbert. Used by permission of the author for PoetryNow.
Source: PoetryNow (2019)