Suffering & creation

Does the body need to suffer to create something for others? Does the individual need to go through personal pain to become a hero? Though such questions are very difficult to answer, they at least can be analyzed. There is no inherent link between going through suffering and then giving something to the world. Still they say, a hero must suffer personally to be a hero, to be an artist, a philosopher, a saint, a savior.



We know Buddha suffered and in turn gave ideas and acts for peace and harmony. Christ did the same and many others. This is what one understands by the notion of a sacrificing hero. Sacrifice does not mean suffering in terms with death only, it is about how one bears pain and still works for the world. One may disagree: To be a hero one has to pay the grave price of suffering.




Yet the tales of sacrifice are everywhere around us from myth, history to everyday lives. The acts of sacrifice are still with us even in the modern times when there is a dearth of sacrificing heroes. I have two examples to put forward my ideas. One is from the world of art and the other is from philosophy. The instances are not closely related, but they make us comprehend about how we do not have such heroes in our times whether we need them or not. There are crises in sacrificing heroes whether conceived literally or symbolically.



Michael Jackson inflicted unprecedented pain on his body. His alleged rhinoplasty for reconstruction of his nose or for mere cosmetic purpose was ultimately aimed for his aesthetic goals. He shaped his eyebrows, narrowed his nose, took female hormones, kept boyish voice pitch and girlish whispering, colored him pink, and orientalized his looks. All such cosmetological operations and prostheses gradually resulted in skin disease, dead tissues, scars and unbearable pain. The self-injury within continued and produced some of the iconic creations which exulted billions of people from remote islands to icy regions of the world. He suffered and created; he acted upon himself and acted out for us. Till he lived, his body remained the site of suffering. There is no inherent link between inner pain and outer pleasure, the suffering body and the brilliance of music, but we know it happened.



Then there was one of the foremost philosophers of the modern times, the German Friedrich Nietzsche. He suffered from continuous migraine headaches, severe depression, dizziness, temporary losses of vision, convulsive digestive disorders, and cerebral syphilis. Despite his wrecking health, he prodigiously worked. He was exhausted by his failing health, yet he wrote some of the richest of philosophical books during those years of sufferings.



Some suffer naturally and some inflict suffering deliberately, but suffering does not exhaust but lead to phenomenal consequences. Such causation is not a law of nature, but there are heroes who have suffered and produced wonders for the world.



Suffering and sacrifice are both literal and symbolic: You feel it, if not you experience it physically. I know some people but cannot name them for obvious reasons, and they have been most creative when they have suffered mentally or physically. Still suffering does not naturally lead to creation in forms of political heroes or creative artists. There is a mysterious bond between the two states!



I would not like to draw a moral conclusion out of my ideas. I still would like to think that we have no heroes in our times because we are not ready to feel that burden of bodily pains and extreme forms of mental engagements. We think that changes are brought by inflicting pains on others. But the sacrificial motive needs the self-preserved site of the body to go into the extremities.



My proposition is not a grammar of heroism. I just wanted to cite some examples of who did what on what extreme conditions. Cultures and nations need such extremities at times. We lack such severe states of mind and body and that is why we do not have heroes. We do not have heroes probably because we do not know how to suffer.



Such ideas of suffering and sacrifice are not merely about dying for the country or humanity. The intensity of thoughts and feeling too are what suffering is in metaphorical terms. Every sufferer does not become a Narayan Gopal but self-suffering certainly makes one aware of the world around. Yet suffering does not necessarily lead to creation and shape heroism.



Nietzsche or Michael Jackson, the mythical saints or historical masterminds, a poet or a singer, a scientist or a painter, their self-inflicting pains are the glorious tales of sadism. Gandhi preached to suffer and liberate. He bore pain on himself before asking others to suffer. Someone said he was a sadist. One would not deny that there is some trace of sadism in such acts. Michael Jackson was a sadist then but for others he created. Nietzsche did not suffer deliberately. Suffering turned creative in his part, it did not exhaust him.



pallabi@pallabi.wlink.com.np

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