Suffering is an inescapable aspect of the human condition. It has been written about and reflected upon since ancient times and most religious traditions have something to say about it. The Christian view, for example, holds that the world is 'fallen', that suffering and death are inevitable, that God is with us during these times and that suffering can bring out the best and noblest of human responses.

Many people, when they undergo a period of intense suffering and pain, for whatever reason, will not be comforted by formulaic responses. Being told that Jesus suffered and therefore understands us will not help a person who doesn't believe. It may not even help a believer.

My wife is a Thai Buddhist who holds, as you'd expect, that it is the desire for things in this world, the selfish craving for pleasure, objects, wealth material that leads to suffering. Christian ascetics in the early Church came to similar conclusions, though from a very different position.

This may only partially allay the questions that suffering raises for modern people. This is not an age of faith. Existential thinkers like Camus and Sartre wrote about ways of being in a faithless world and (like Nietzsche's ubermensch,) argued that one has to see the world as it is, without illusions, and then make one's life through action. One sees the suffering and goes ahead anyway, creating a life that gives some solace, if not meaning.

In Ambulances, Larkin wrote how the sight of an ambulance in the street, forced us to "sense the solving emptiness/That lies just under all we do." Everyday existence is upended by the presence of suffering suddenly amongst us, which throws all we do into a kind of pointless relief. That seems to be the place where we are at.

It doesn't have to be so. We are not as smart as we think we are and people of old were often wiser when it comes to questions like this. It always pays to pay close attention to the past, not to be in its thrall, but to give us a deeper understanding of the present.