The Greeks had a phrase: pathei mathos. It translates to “learning through suffering”. In it is contained the idea that -suffering-, an umbrella term that encapsulates all that causes us pain and misery, upset, sickness and death, can be beneficent; a didactic force that has sometimes been explained with the use of analogies of creative violence. A gem being polished. A marble block shaped with careful blows. A crucible in which intense, potentially destructive heat is concentrated. Yet as a storm possesses and releases enormous energy and havoc onto its immediate environment, and stone hit with an uncoordinated hammer blow shatters shapelessly, the crucible boils over and is ruined, so undirected force or suffering is ruinous. Suffering is only a learning opportunity when it is recognised as such, otherwise it will only damage.