Suffering is Not Worthy of Being Praised .

Introduction

This was when I was joking with friends on the evening of January 26, 2026, saying I wanted to see what this year’s college entrance exam essay topic was and try writing one to see what score it would get. It turns out this year’s essay theme was again about various “positive energy” and “praising suffering” content. I’ve always loved writing since childhood. In middle school, my exam essays read like novels and contained satirical themes. Although I often got low scores from teachers for not being “positive” enough, my classmates loved reading my essays. Sometimes when papers were handed back, everyone would glance at the essay section of my paper. Later in high school, I found that college entrance exam essay topics became increasingly “positive,” but in Chinese society, there isn’t that much positive energy. Rather than using “positive energy” to silence students and news media, it would be better to let everyone learn to view the world with rational and critical eyes.

The original prompt was as follows:

Read the following materials and write according to the requirements. (60 points) He wanted to sing a piece for the children, but his heart was churning and he couldn’t open his mouth. ——Lao She “The Drum Singer” (from National Paper I Reading II) If I were a bird, I should sing with my hoarse throat ——Ai Qing “I Love This Land” I want to embrace you one by one with my bleeding hands, Because a nation has risen ——Mu Dan “Praise” What associations and thoughts do the above materials inspire in you? Please write an essay. Requirements: Choose the right angle, determine the theme, clarify the genre, and create your own title; do not copy or plagiarize; do not reveal personal information; no less than 800 words.

Suffering is Not Worthy of Being Praised

When people praise suffering, who has ever thought: this suffering should not have come in the first place? When a migrant worker engages in hard physical labor but runs around everywhere because of unpaid wages; when rural children are forced to work early for family livelihood because they can’t afford school; when delivery riders risk their lives rushing through the city for delivery fees… some people don’t think about how to help them escape suffering, but choose to praise suffering instead.

I want to clarify one thing first: what we should praise has never been “suffering” itself, but the dignity and responsibility of those who are still willing to speak, still willing to sing, still willing to embrace in the midst of suffering. Lao She’s “wanting to sing but unable to open his mouth” represents the weight pressing on one’s chest; Ai Qing’s “singing with a hoarse throat” means not staying silent despite knowing the difficulties; Mu Dan’s “embracing one by one with bleeding hands” means choosing to stand with fellow countrymen despite paying a price. They point to gazing at reality and persisting in humanity, not packaging suffering as motivational material.

However, in real-world contexts, “praising suffering” is often misused as another narrative: turning problems that should be solved into backgrounds worthy of admiration; turning injustices that should be questioned into lessons of “you should learn to endure.” Why does this happen? The reason is not complicated: those who praise suffering often haven’t truly experienced such suffering; and praising “enduring hardship” can make more people mistakenly believe that injustice and oppression should naturally be endured, even praised.

I once watched a documentary about how an elderly vegetable vendor struggled to survive. The camera showed his various hardships: leaving home at 4 AM pulling a heavy tricycle and not returning until dark. Every scene depicted “suffering,” and the narration passionately described this nearly seventy-year-old man’s “efforts.” Later, the camera showed the old man pushing his tricycle up a difficult slope, while on the opposite road, a Porsche sports car flashed by. The comments overwhelmingly asked: could this old man’s lifetime savings buy a Porsche? At that moment, the narrative of “success comes with effort” and “even such an old person is working hard for life, what right do you have not to work hard” suddenly seemed untenable—because reality is not fair, and effort doesn’t necessarily lead to dignity.

Why must a seventy-year-old man live so laboriously? I think this may not be his intention. It’s just that if he doesn’t do this, he has no way to survive. A society’s institutions and public services should strive to ensure people don’t have to exchange “dignity overdraft” for survival; and social members who jointly bear costs in consumption, labor, and taxation should jointly enjoy basic security and convenience—this is not anyone’s extra favor, but rights people deserve.

Therefore, the question is not “whether to work hard,” but when suffering is treated as motivational resources, it often personalizes structural problems, privatizes public issues, and turns cracks that should be repaired into fate individuals must grit their teeth and swallow. When people’s attention is directed to “being moved” and “inspiration,” some things that should be questioned are no longer mentioned; when suffering is praised, more people will think suffering is natural, even considering “ability to endure hardship” as the only legitimacy.

Birds singing with hoarse throats is not to prove “tearing one’s voice is great,” but to prove “not staying silent even when hoarse”; embracing with bleeding hands is not to prove “bleeding is romantic,” but to prove “still choosing connection and responsibility even when injured.” Similarly, we shouldn’t rewrite the weight of “being unable to speak” into the comfort of “just endure it.” What truly deserves affirmation is social efforts that allow people to sing and embrace freely and dignifiedly without being forced to be hoarse or bleed.

Precisely because of this, facing suffering, what we need is not slogan-like self-comfort, but more honest and specific seeing: seeing where problems come from, seeing who bears the cost, seeing where change should fall. If writing can only filter “correct emotions” without accommodating real pain and questioning, then it becomes whitewashing. There isn’t so much reality in the world that can be packaged as “positive energy”; if someone tries to replace problem-solving actions with pretty words, remember: one day, people will see through reality’s cracks and shift their gaze from “praising suffering” to “reducing suffering.” And this is the true direction that hoarse singing and bleeding embraces point toward.