But then, everyone has suffered, so we're talking hypotheticals here.

Dana's Apr. 29 blog starts off with a couple of big questions, the first of which is, "Do you think suffering is a necessary part of everyone's life? In other words, do you feel your own experience has made you a 'better' person?"

I was thinking this morning about a book I read many years ago, in which the writer describes his idea of a future utopia. It's a vaguely socialist/communist vision, in which everyone does what they enjoy while a higher authority distributes to everyone what they need to do their job.

In one scene a visitor to this utopia, who is being guided about and shown all the details of this community, sees a man sitting by a pond, pensively feeding swans. The guide explains to the visitor that this man is a great writer, and that he needs these beautiful surroundings for inspiration. They approach the writer and he invites them into his house, which is very grand and filled with great works of art. While there the writer soliliquizes about the past fate of artists, how they were forced to live in squalor, required by circumstance and an unfeeling world to trade off their time between creating art and earning a living. He expresses horror at the barbarity of a society that would require an artist to support himself and marvels that any great art was created under such circumstances.

I've forgotten most of the rest of the book (it was truly bad, bad writing) but that chapter stuck in my head. I can never think about it without feeling torn between wanting to fall down laughing and wanting to grab the writer by the collar so I can slap him several times for his arrogance.

There are so many things wrong with this picture, but I'm not writing this to rant about artists who think talent means the world owes them a living. The fact is, in spite of this author's wish fulfillment fantasizing, the greatest art humanity has created came from people who were often experiencing the worst circumstances. Ludwig van Beethoven, Virginia Woolf, Vincent Van Gogh and on and on, experienced great suffering. I'd argue that it was that suffering that made them such great artists. Their suffering gave them the empathy and insight to create works of art that speak to the rest of us, the inspiration to create the sort of art that resonates in the soul and leaves its audience moved, thoughtful and feeling similarly inspired.

I've never lost a child, experienced racism or had to endure a vicious dictatorship. I've never lived in a war torn country or had to watch my loved ones starving. But I can understand the pain of those who have been through those things. I've known my own suffering, experienced my own pain and grief. I can take my experience and use it to imagine what I would feel in their place. While I may not comprehend exactly what they are feeling, I can understand well enough to weep with them. If I'm a good enough writer I can help my readers understand as well.

Someone who has never suffered is someone who has nothing to say. They can't understand what other people are going through in their lives because they have no place within them from which to draw understanding. Without that empathy, that ability to extrapolate from our experiences, it is impossible to create art or even to live a life that is anything other than superficial and empty. Relationships would be of the shallowest variety, accomplishments would be meaningless, nothing in life would have any savor to it. After all, if you've never tasted anything but sugar, you wouldn't know it was sweet. You have to experience salty, sour and bitter to appreciate and value the sweetness of sugar.

Feeding swans makes a pretty picture, but it doesn't make great art. Experiencing the vicissitudes of life doesn't hamstring our ability to create. On the contrary, every trial, every sorrow gives the artist greater empathy and their work greater depth. Nobody wants to go through trials and difficulties, but they are necessary. Without adversity we remain children, staring with wide-eyed incomprehension at the world around us.

I'm not about to start writing odes in praise of suffering, but I can look back at those times in my life that have been the hardest and value them. Although I railed against my suffering at those times, weeping and begging God to release me from my pain, I can see now what I learned and how I've grown. I wish it would have been possible to have accomplished this more easily; I wish I didn't have to learn the hard way. But I did and I do, and I am in no way unique. It's the way we humans are made. The greater our experience, the stronger the foundation for our imaginations.

In the end, ironically, it's our pain that gives us the strength to fly.