Suffering and Wisdom

Perhaps the most moving artistic creation I have ever encountered was a four hour performance of Aeschylus’s The Oresteia produced by Robert Icke in the Almeida Theater in London. The performance itself was truly staggering, and I would pay an exorbitant sum to have a recording of the performance. I often thought that I would show it to every class of students I taught if I had the means. The interpretation of the canonical Greek tragedy was that impressive, that intricately woven, a near perfect artistic creation.

For those unfamiliar with Aeschylus’s play, The Oresteia tells the part of the story of the House of Atreus. While the play included elements of Iphigenia at Aulis as well, the rendition was seamless. Agamemnon murders his daughter Iphigenia to win the Trojan War. Agamemnon was successful in the war as a result of his filicide, but his wife Klytemnestra murders him upon his return for revenge. Their children Orestes (for whom the play is named) and Electra then conspire to murder their mother and her lover Aegisthus, who helped Klytemnestra with the murder of Agamemnon.

Importantly, the play kept as its focus one of the most notable quotations from the second part of Aeschylus’s trilogy of plays titled The Libation Bearers. In this section, Aeschylus writes that “the one who acts must suffer.” The quotation plays heavily on the themes of the story. Agamemnon acts by killing his daughter and thus must suffer the consequences – his own murder by his wife and her adulterous lover. However, Klytemnestra and Aegisthus must then suffer for their actions as well, namely in their murder by Orestes (and in Icke’s theatrical performance, Electra as well). The central question then becomes whether Orestes will have to suffer for his matricide.

In the play as in the book, the answer arrives in the form of a trial proposed by Athena. At the end of the trial, the twelve Athenian jurors arrive at a six to six tie over whether Orestes should be convicted or acquitted. In such circumstances, Athena casts the deciding vote, which is always innocence and acquittal (also, the origin of the innocent before proven guilty concept in American law). Orestes is not killed for his actions and is allowed to go free, raising the question of justifiable crime and murder. The question does not have a clear cut answer, but the proposition that “the one who acts must suffer” remains. In a sense, Orestes does suffer because he is pursued relentlessly by the Furies for his actions until Athena intervenes. He simply doesn’t suffer death.

In many ways, those six words underscore a complex truth and feel almost kin to Newton’s Third Law of Motion. Actions precipitate reactions, though perhaps instead of force, Aeschylus implies a form of karma: a “good” action leads to reward – a consequence suffered positively, while a “bad” action leads to punishment – or consequence suffered negatively. It’s a notion that plays heavily in many world religions and a common tenet of various moralities. Worship, and receive Heaven in Christianity, Jannah in Islam, or nirvana in Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Interestingly, each of those examples can be interpreted as a release or escape from suffering.

I find the concept particularly interesting when applied to the world of mental health. One of the inherent experiences of mental illness or cerebral dysfunction is the asking of the question “Why me?” In my own experiences, the question has played a large role in both my illness and my recovery. The problem for those afflicted, however, is that there is almost always no initial action that leads to consequences suffered. The suffering simply begins, whether genetically or traumatically induced. There is no crime, trial, and verdict. There is merely the suffering, the insidious descent of madness into one’s life with no clear explanation. The fact makes the suffering even more unbearable than the already oppressive loss of your own agency of thought. I have often asked myself what I have done to deserve these conditions which have nestled into my brain long enough now to be assimilated into my own concept of self. Was my being in the wrong place at the wrong time while playing freshman basketball as a 15 year old worthy of the Bipolar Disorder that my concussion induced in me? The obvious answer is no. Yet, here I am.

As I progress further down my road to recovery, I find that the question and statement have lost significance to me. I no longer need a reason for the horrors inflicted upon my psyche. In a sense, mental illness functions as a loophole to Aeschylus’s human truth. Instead, I find that I abide by a different literary philosophy – one more true to the experience of mental illness, my lived reality. I turn not to Aeschylus but to Zora Neale Hurston, who, in her brilliant novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, writes:

All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.

 

The pivotal phrase, of course, is “indiscriminate suffering,” and fear, as Hurston writes, is the inevitable result. I have yet to encounter a single person living with mental illness who doesn’t have a very intricate understanding of true, bottomless fear, for which the word “fear” itself feels terribly insufficient.

Yet, I think of my father, whose follicular lymphoma diagnosis instilled in him a primordial fear as well. What separates our experiences? We can both apply names to our conditions. We can both utilize somewhat effective treatment. We can both succumb to our conditions if left untreated. The only true difference I can envision is that his cancer primarily affects his body while my Bipolar Disorder, PTSD, and TBI predominantly affect my mind. This particular difference, namely the severing of trust in my own thoughts, is the only facet of our emotional experiences that differs dramatically. My dad’s fear results from a logical, rational, objective fear of dying. Meanwhile, my own fear stems from a distrust of my own brain, a loss of logic, rationale, and objectivity, a fear not that my condition may kill me but that I may kill myself because of my condition, as so many with my condition do – almost 90% according to a 2004 meta-analysis.

In truth, our experiences are not overly dissimilar, though mental illness remains less well understood, perhaps because of the fact that it exists outside of the realms of logic and reason. My fear is in many ways the exact same fear as my father’s. In many ways, it is the exact same as my mother’s as she watches the men of her family struggle to retain control of our lives.

The older I become, the more I realize that every single human being has life altering hardships. Some lose parents at young ages. Some are autistic. Some fall into addiction. We all deal with life’s wicked curveballs. Some of us succeed for a time, but we all eventually lose. That, I suppose, is the very nature of the human condition. Perhaps, then, we should turn again to Aeschylus, but this time to his play Agamemnon, in which he writes:

Wisdom comes through suffering.

 

Both Aeschylus and Hurston offer that wisdom may be a byproduct of suffering. As applied to my own life, I can safely say that their statements are true, at least for me. I have suffered at the hands of my mental illness substantially. It has stolen years, people, pleasures, and even my own agency throughout my life. However, I can safely say that I am a more empathetic, understanding, and compassionate person as a result. My suffering has mauled me in ways, yes, but it has also strengthened me, molded me into a better version of myself. I have grown through it, literally and metaphorically, and my suffering may well continue. With any luck, I will continue gaining wisdom as time unfolds, and perhaps my experiences and writings can help others in the ways that Aeschylus and Hurston have helped me.