The Princess of Wales and the Beauty of Suffering

I happened to breeze through social media Friday afternoon about four minutes after the Princess of Wales dropped the news about her cancer diagnosis. I’d kept one eye on the chatter surrounding her whereabouts in recent weeks, muttering to myself and a few others about why people couldn’t give the poor woman a break and let her rest until her promised Easter return.

Perhaps because of my largely unsuspicious nature of her whereabouts, the bombshell news she dropped about her ill health was quite shocking. And like many others, I felt terrible for her, her family, and even, in a way, the British nation and the rest of the world.

Why? Because the Princess of Wales seems like a genuinely nice person. Reports indicate that she is very kind to others, tries to be a faithful wife and mother, supporting her husband and raising her children, and seeks to be a source of encouragement to others. I especially appreciate her seeming commitment to traditional values, such as her embrace of femininity and other duties many women often scoff at in our present time.

And it is because the Princess of Wales seems like such a nice person that we hate to see her suffer. She is the personification of the age-old question: Why do bad things happen to good people?

This question of suffering has been in the back of my mind lately, particularly since I watched the short video below.

https://twitter.com/Jason/status/1768018166767108304

I don’t know who the speaker is, but the talk seems to be one given to Stanford students on the topic of success.

“Resilience matters in success,” this speaker says, and then makes a statement that many today would likely find shocking. “I don’t know how to teach it [resilience] to you except for I hope suffering happens to you.”

He goes on to say:

To this day I use the phrase ‘pain and suffering’ inside our company with great glee—and I mean that … I mean that in a happy way, because you want to train, you want to refine the character of your company, you want greatness out of them. And greatness is not intelligence, greatness comes from character, and character isn’t formed out of smart people—it’s formed out of people who have suffered.

Giving a little chuckle, he then tells the Stanford students listening to him that he “wish[es] upon [them] ample doses of pain and suffering.”

It’s easy to laugh over those words, but there’s certainly nothing funny about suffering when one is going through it. In fact, suffering flies in the face of what we in the postmodern world think is good. Philosopher Peter Kreeft summarized such thinking well in his book, Making Sense Out of Suffering:

What is the greatest good? What gives our lives meaning? What is our end? Modernity answers, feeling good. The ancients answer, being good. Feeling good is not compatible with suffering; being good is. Therefore the fact of suffering threatens modernity much more than it threatened the ancients.

Furthermore, the most popular modern answer to the question of what it means to be a good person is to be kind. Do not make other people suffer. If it doesn’t hurt anyone, it’s O.K. By this standard, God is not good if he lets us suffer. But by ancient standards, God might be good even though he lets us suffer, if he does it for the sake of the greater end of happiness, perfection of life and character and soul, that is, self. [Emphasis added.]

In essence, when our present generations look at suffering—such as that which the Princess of Wales is experiencing now—we often think it a shame, a mean act of God to allow someone so sweet and kind and good to experience such hardship. In actuality, it seems that this thinking is backwards, for suffering produces character, refining that individual and making him or her a more beautiful soul, even more useful for God’s kingdom.

And honestly, glimpses of that seem to be happening already in Princess of Wales’ own life. As she hints in her announcement video, her own diagnosis has given her more compassion and understanding of those who are going through cancer. Undoubtedly, she will be able to draw on that knowledge and understanding in the years to come, offering even more hope and encouragement to others.

Her example should encourage us in our own suffering. Not everyone may be going through cancer or a difficult health diagnosis … but we all have times that are hard or difficult, whether loneliness, broken relationships, financial troubles, or an uncertain and scary future. That suffering shouldn’t make us curl up and feel sorry for ourselves.

Instead, that suffering should give us cause for rejoicing, because it signals we have been given a great gift—a gift to refine us into better individuals and a gift to use to encourage others who will later go through the same suffering.

Yes, it’s incredibly sad that the Princess of Wales must go through these difficulties—I certainly wish her well and hope we soon hear of her full return to health. But let’s not let her suffering be wasted. Let’s take it and learn from her example and seek to turn our own suffering into good both for ourselves and others.

“We glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” - Romans 5:3-5

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Image Credit: Twitter