You truly are, and we are all the better for having such a character around. Though for all the joy you bring, I’d wish for less suffering to fall upon you.
So is it true that suffering builds character? Let’s say it is just to make life simpler here. Just because suffering builds character doesn’t mean it is the only, or best way to build character. You can build a vocabulary by reading cereal boxes but that isn’t the best or only way no?
But I mean… life is suffering. They are intrinsically linked. If you have no suffering you have no life and if you have no life you have no suffering. There isn’t really a way to never feel any suffering at all, no matter how rich or powerful or kind or smart or skilled etc. one is- you will suffer. Likely quite a bit over a long enough life. That’s ok. It’s ok because life is also joy, beauty, warmth… perhaps that is the true meaning and wisdom in “suffering builds character.” We can learn to wait suffering out- learn that we can endure it and get through it-
We can feel a suffering so profound that we feel lost, like the death of a loved one, a suffering that may never truly go away- and we survive it, and in time we learn to get back to our lives and to keep going and to find happiness again even if sometimes we still hurt. We can learn the skills and mindset we need to make it through suffering when we have no choice but to endure, and we can learn to identify when suffering can be escaped through changes or effort. When our own behavior causes us suffering or when circumstances cause suffering but we can work hard and change our circumstances. We can find the sort of dark beauty or the “silver lining,” the “opportunity” suffering can offer to grow or come out of it better off and more able to avoid that and other suffering in the future.
Perhaps most tragically and most importantly- the “character” that suffering grows can be that of someone who understands pain and doesn’t want others to know what they know. The person who has suffered unkindness or cruelty by others, who’s suffered hunger or the elements or whatever else and who makes the effort to not treat others that way themselves, perhaps to prevent or stop others from doing that to people, perhaps who eases the suffering of those who are enduring such things in the way that only someone who truly understands that pain can, as someone who has somehow found their way through- and if nothing else, each of us who has known suffering and made it through can serve as a light at the end of the tunnel for someone else who is suffering to see that there is another side and something beyond that suffering.
But I mean… life is suffering. They are intrinsically linked. If you have no suffering you have no life and if you have no life you have no suffering. There isn’t really a way to never feel any suffering at all, no matter how rich or powerful or kind or smart or skilled etc. one is- you will suffer. Likely quite a bit over a long enough life. That’s ok. It’s ok because life is also joy, beauty, warmth… perhaps that is the true meaning and wisdom in “suffering builds character.” We can learn to wait suffering out- learn that we can endure it and get through it-