#12: The Choice After Suffering

A retrospective of 'Sansho the Bailiff'

When you suffer

Even the most tragic loss

Vanquished of light

You are enough

Invisible Demons

Going through personal struggles the past few weeks, I find myself transported back to about 2 years ago to a forgotten summer. I was doing well for a time. I had been in rehab for a few months and had transitioned to only going for a couple hours every few days. I was feeling good, looking for work in theater and staging, I felt proud of myself. I finally felt that this time sobriety might stick.

Cue to me waking up in a bout of pain I wouldn’t wish upon my arch nemesis, unable to look at the sun, lest its rays pierce my pupils. Then I saw the bottles. Somehow, I had been on a multi-day bender of havoc and isolation. The scariest part, one that continues to send chills down my spine even thinking of it, let alone writing it down, is that I didn’t remember picking up, nor the cause of doing so. Indescribable terror clutched me, corroding me inside out. I was kicked out of that program.

There were many actions I could’ve done, and initially I made all the wrong ones. I would harness a few weeks, then months, only to continuously hit a wall, and disconnect from my friends and program. Sometimes i wouldn’t drink, but mostly I did. Self-esteem had been in a longtime lull ever since that day. Did I deserve good things? Do people like me? How do I make friends? How can I connect when I don’t even know myself? I should just sleep 10-12 hours a night. I wanted to tear everything down.

Self-hatred felt good, because it’s all I knew. It is safe, comforting, addictive. Hatred after suffering is delicious. Flowing lava of hell hooked straight to the veins. But even at my lowest, continuously plummeting rock bottoms, there were only two choices that kept me alive so far: keep coming back, and telling myself “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”

We all have a choice in the wake of suffering. Sometimes one gets a sign from god that tells them rather bluntly that something is wrong with the way they are living, while others are forced to go their own path of discovery, as I had to.

Do we grow and learn from suffering, or do we grant ourselves permission to be taken in its squall and inflict it onto ourselves and others?In an interview, Viktor Frankl was asked a question about suffering, more specifically despair. Unexpectedly, he gave his answer as an equation.

D = S - M

D = S + M

Triumph = Suffering with Meaning

Despair = Suffering without Meaning

We all suffer. Some more than others. Frankl himself was a Holocaust survivor. He went through a worse hell than almost anyone on Earth could possibly suffer. Yet he continued to live. Purpose.

Sansho the Bailiff (1954) asks that very question. What do we do with suffering?

Slave to Savior

“Without mercy, man is a beast.”

Stated at the beginning of Sansho the Bailiff, these are the last words spoken to Zushiō and Anju by their father, a generous and loved feudal Japanese lord banished from his home and post.

Several years later, when the siblings come of age, they make their journey to their banished father with their mother. After a dastardly betrayal, the two are taken from their mother and sold into slavery.

The compound is a decaying purgatory. The two are punished and placed into impossible conditions. After a failed escape, the two children are branded. They are approached by Tarō, the benevolent son of the estate’s lord, the titular Sansho, who begs them to survive until escape is possible.

Zushiō and Anju come of age in slavery. They toil, are forced to take the dying out of the estate to die alone in the wilderness, and learn their father had recently died. Zushiō, young and dexterous, has the chance to escape, promising Anju that he will return. Once gone, Anju drowns herself in a nearby lake to keep her knowledge of her brother’s whereabouts hidden. Shortly thereafter, Zushiō claims his birthright and furthermore, ascending to the governor of the province. Here, he could do anything. Burn it all to the ground, transcribe his own suffering onto others as retribution for the nation’s sins.

Instead, his first, immediate act is to outlaw slavery. When Sansho resists the edict, Zushiō has the chance to inflict everything he has suffered onto his foe right then and there. He chooses restrain, arresting and exiling the Bailiff and his family, even after learning of his sister’s sacrifice. His power enforced, the people at his back, the world stands open before Zushiō. But he is done. Honoring his fathers words and completing all he needs to, he shocks the nation and resigns from his post as governor, leaving it all behind in search of his lost mother. Zushiō chose kindness, love, and restraint. As we struggle through life’s hardships, we must continue to live. We do not need to forget the past nor our traumas in order to live, but we must pivot, and learn to stand tall amongst the shadow of old lives and sins.

It is easy to think we do not deserve it; a good life or forgiveness. Every so often, I must remind myself that being deserving of good things is not self-indulgence nor ego. Everyone has a chance to become better and live on. I cannot offer you an antidote to your despair. All I can say with firm confidence that you have a choice to make. When you tell yourself you deserve to profit off misery, that you are deserving of destroying yourself or others, as that is the nature of the world, take inventory of what comes next. Reject the machine.

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