4 minute read
Why Do We Love to Suffer | Hanna Bondarenko
I hate happy endings in books and films. They never seem to be right. Every time I read something like “and then they lived happily ever after”, I feel as if I was in Barbie Land riding an artificial pink pony. Why does happiness seem so fake sometimes? Is it just poor screenwriting? Maybe, but I’d look for the answers elsewhere. Namely, in the lack of suffering.
Throughout the history of art, pain has been the key ingredient of all masterpieces. “Art doesn’t typically get made by happy people” – writes Gabrielle Zevin in her bestseller Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Think of the greatest movies of all time, and you will hardly name one that’s all peaches and cream. Most of them are full of hardship and misery. Even when it comes to musicians, we can easily find many who have built their entire repertoires around the topics of moral dilemmas and difficult experiences. Look no further than Billie Eilish or Lana del Rey. Struggles are the soundtrack to everybody’s life.
We need to overcome obstacles in order to attribute some sense to the things we do or experience. Scientists have long noticed this causal chain and have put forward hypotheses to explain this. Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, claims that pain serves us by adding meaning and value to our lives. “I think there’s no meaning if there’s no suffering”, says Bloom. What are you more likely to boast about: passing a tough exam or a simple test? We tend to associate suffering and difficulties with a reason for pride, while things that come easily to us usually remain unnoticed. Pain is inextricably linked to the neurological features of our brain. To keep itself “in good shape” it needs constant stimulation in the form of challenges. Whenever we do something strenuous and demanding our neurons grow and multiply. In other words, we develop through pain.
Suffering can take many forms. For instance, it can involve intentionally putting ourselves in less favourable positions. This deliberate suffering is often praised and considered a sign of morality and good. Daylian Cane and George Newman, professors at Yale’s School of Management, have conducted research on this feature of perception of reality. They ran four experiments and found out that many people consider selflessness an inherent element of any act of help.
In one of the experiments, 145 adults were asked to give their opinions about two ways of developing a business. The first one was to donate money to a charity which would boost the business’ reputation and attract new clients. The second way was to invest the same amount of money for advertising. Surprisingly, participants evaluated the first method more negatively than the latter. They stated that the entrepreneur who donated money was not altruistic enough while the entrepreneur who spent money on advertising wasn’t even judged from the perspective of altruism. He was given a neutral rating. At the same time, study participants expected selflessness from the donor. They would rather he hadn’t donated money at all. His good deed was diminished since he did it without suffering.
This phenomenon is called tainted altruism. It explains why we sometimes see doing some good as worse than doing no good at all. Imagine that the company you’re working at is looking for new employees. Your manager tells you that if you recommend a person and they get the position, you will be given a bonus. In the end, the friend you recommended is hired, and the bonus makes it to your bank account. It’s a win-win situation. However, you face a lot of judgement and comments about helping your friend only for your own benefit, simply because you didn’t have to suffer in the process. Our focus is not on the final effect, but whether or not you had to endure hardship to achieve it.
In the end, I suppose my dissatisfaction with happy endings makes perfect sense. I can’t relate to a situation which suggests that the rest of a character’s life will go flawlessly right, because mine rarely does. We all want some reassurance that we’re not the only ones who are miserable and stuck with an imperfect life scenario. Why not give the audience what they really want and make a perfect ending a little bit imperfect? Thus, if by any chance you’re thinking about writing a novel or directing a movie, do make your characters suffer a bit. Your audience will love it.
