Condreay 1

Daniel Condreay

Mrs. Rowe

Composition

19 January 2021

The pain that suffering causes people influences who they are as a person more than

happiness. The intensity of the pain and sorrow that someone endures can both positively and

negatively shape who they are because one never fully heals from agony but learns to adapts to

the changes that it brings.

These and other ideologies are expressed heavily in David Brooks’ article “What

Suffering Does”. Brooks’ asserts that suffering is challenging, arduous, and fractious, yet

everyone must encounter it. If someone does not confront the issues that suffering brings, it is

utterly impossible to develop into a person that understands the obstacles that other people have

overcome and continue to face.

The suffering that people in society undergo gives them the ability to decide how they

want to express and deal with the turmoil that is plaguing them. Brooks’ states this concept

clearly when he is describing how people who have been through suffering have coped, and that

happiness is not the answer for the pain, but the realization is.

Brooks claims that suffering is imperative if a person wants to grasp the emotions and

strife that other people in society have faced and have surmounted, for happiness is not the

solution to suffering but visualizing something as important is.

 Condreay 2

Works Cited

Brooks, David. “What Suffering Does.” ​The New York Times​, The New York Times, 7 Apr.

2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/opinion/brooks-what-suffering-does.html.