Medium Article
Why Suffering Is Not All Bad
Four Lessons from History Masters to Apply to Your Personal Life
On May 17, 1814, Johanna Schopenhauer wrote a “last” letter to her young son Arthur telling him the following:
My duty towards you is at an end, go your way, I have nothing more to do with you… Leave your address here, but do not write to me, I shall henceforth neither read nor answer any letter from you…
So this is the end… You have hurt me too much. Live and be as happy as you can be.
It can be difficult to understand how a mother can write something similar to a child. But despite this and decades later, Arthur Schopenhauer would become one of the greatest “pessimists” in history.
Gloom Will Always Show Us Hope
Think about it for a moment: if you were lost on a dark night in the ocean, any light would be a halo of hope. Your situation at that time may be the worst you have ever experienced in life, but as the saying well remembers: hope is the last thing that is lost.
Owen D. Young, a lawyer and businessman once said:
“People who can put themselves in the place of other people, who can understand the workings of their minds, need never…
