What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You - Kinder?

Ps. 66:10-12

It’s not clear who originated the wise teaching - “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

I first heard it from Sylvia Boorstein. Whether it’s an ancient Buddhist teaching quotes by the Dalai Lama, a gem coined by Haruki Murakami or wisdom from other sources, these words point at the human capacity to turn hardships into opportunities for growth and not just succumb to the sorrow. Both personal afflictions and communal challenges offer different levels of constriction and also ways to try and see them not just as terrors but also as trials or even as tests for our will and endurance. Suffering may not have preordained reasons yet it does give us a chance to respond with more resilience, and if possible, to come out the other end as both softer and stronger people. 

In the psalm we read today the trope of trial by fire is repeated, imagining the people’s sorrows as a silversmith’s workshop, with the creator cast in the role of the artist, refining matter through a process of transformation, not without its costs:

כִּֽי־בְחַנְתָּ֥נוּ אֱלֹהִ֑ים צְ֝רַפְתָּ֗נוּ כִּצְרף־כָּֽסֶף׃

הֲבֵאתָ֥נוּ בַמְּצוּדָ֑ה שַׂ֖מְתָּ מוּעָקָ֣ה בְמתְנֵֽינוּ׃ הִרְכַּ֥בְתָּ אֱנ֗וֹשׁ לְרֹ֫אשֵׁ֥נוּ בָּֽאנוּ־בָאֵ֥שׁ וּבַמַּ֑יִם וַ֝תּוֹצִיאֵ֗נוּ לָרְוָיָֽה׃

You have tried us, O God,

refining us, as one refines silver.

You have caught us in a net,

put a chain on our loins.

You have let people ride over us;

we have endured fire and water,

and You have brought us through to relief.

Ps. 66:10-12

What specific trials could this poem be referring to? And whatever those are - do the waves of trauma, such as the one many of us are living through now, lead to better days or a more meaningful way of being alive, or living up to our purpose? 

Robert Alter unpacks some of what’s going on here:

“Some interpreters have taken the imagery of testing through fire in this verse and the language of the next two verses as expressions of the ordeal of exile that began in 586 B.C.E. There is nothing, however, in the formulations here that explicitly refer to exile, and the poet could easily have in mind any moment of impending disaster when powerful enemies threatened to overwhelm the Judahite state.”

What’s further puzzling in this chapter is that from v. 13 onwards the poet is speaking in an individual voice, possibly referring to personal pains and struggles  and not the national or collective trials such as exiles as war. How are those two voices interconnected, and is this then about our private or public pains, or both? 

The notion of major ordeals in our lives as divine tests and chances for massive shifts and internal changes is familiar from other chapters in our literature and myth. Abraham, the father of the nation, is told to have gone through ten trials of faith, passing them all to become the faithful father of monotheism. What was the impact on his soul, and on his heart?  

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson reflects on this story and on what happens when our suffering are cast as trials, or works of art, and it’s our attitudes that matter most:

“Tinged with sorrow. I cannot think of a better description of what it feels like to be alive. We Jews know that the dominant flavor of life is bittersweet; even in our moments of greatest joy, we recall our losses. And even during our greatest grief, we draw consolation from love and hope. Being tried does not have to destroy us. Interestingly, the biblical word for test, nissayon, develops into the modern Hebrew word for experience or experiment. 

We, alone, can transform our tests into opportunities for new understandings and deeper connections. 

With the right attitude, our trials can transform us. The philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, said, “What does not kill me, makes me stronger.” I think Abraham would have said, “What does not kill me, can make me more compassionate.”

How we cope with the trials of life spells the difference between renewal and resignation, between spiritual growth and spiritual stagnation.”

Come what may, and so much is at stake right now for so many of us, the image of going through the silversmith’s process of fire and water to refine and reimagine who and how we are is both terrifying and reassuring. 

If suffering is, on deeper level, optional, than so is our resolve to not resign ourselves to how things are but to find ways to let go of what’s keeping us from focus on what’s positive and what can help us, like new silver, shine brighter yet, with more kindness, and compassion, for how hard it is for everyone, and with more courage to take it further, one step, one test at a time.

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