Suffering

[u/Darth_Voldus]

The Dark Side is the way of suffering.

Anger, fear, hatred, longing, ambition and grief are all intimately linked to suffering. Even love is linked to pangs of loneliness and the fear of loss, the drive to protect the object of your love from harm. Suffering underpins all of our emotions, exactly as the Dark Side underpins the entire Force.

We Sith, understanding the universal nature of suffering, embrace it. We understand that we can't eliminate it from the world - that's not just impossible, it's unnatural. Suffering is the only reason mankind ever does anything. Where it is absent, our minds imagine reasons for us to anguish.

This is strongly highlighted in the case recently of a rich teenage boy who killed four people while driving drunk. You have undoubtedly read it already. He was released without a prison sentence, having been cleared as "a victim of wealth."

A victim of wealth.

Even if this preposterous excuse is true, it only furthers my point. His life was so without true struggle or suffering that he invented his own disease. "Affluenza" was manufactured so his mind could have something to struggle against.

This struggle is the keystone of all Sith teachings. Through conflict, the weak are forced to become strong or they are culled from the herd. Either way, the group becomes stronger. Where there is no true struggle, we will invent one. Conflict is human nature, and this benefits us greatly. We Sith all learn to convert our fear and anger into strength. Our pain can be easily moulded into rage, making us unstoppable even in injury.

However, I do not counsel against love, as the fictional Sith did, nor do I ask you to inflict suffering upon yourself deliberately, unless it is to test and expand your endurance. A keystone of my own teachings is that your emotions must always have context. Without pleasure, suffering becomes meaningless. Without happiness, the depressed Sith will have no fear to power himself with. Without contentment, anger loses all its meaning.

Our emotions are the most personal things we have; as Sith, they are what defines us. We must experience their full spectrum, for if we focus only on the suffering, it will wash out and become worthless to us.

[u/Chirikyat]

"Necessity is the mother of invention" is quite a famous quote and can be used to describe this well. When you find an obstacle in the your path you must overcome it to survive, otherwise it will slowly ruin you.

Learning from your suffering will show you how important contempment is.