Suffering and pain are a constant in this life, as the Greek poet Aeschylus attested almost 2,500 years ago in his masterwork Prometheus Bound.

Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside/The prison wall of pain to exhort and teach the one/Who suffers. All you have to say to me I always knew.

Wrong? I accept the word. I willed, willed to be wrong!/And helping humans I found to be troublesome for myself,/Yet I did not expect a punishment as this –/To be assigned an uninhabited desert peak,/Fastened in mid-air to this crag, and left to rot!

Listen, stop wailing for the pain I suffer now./Step on the ground; I’ll tell you what the future holds/For me: you shall know everything from first to last.

Do what I ask you, do it! Share the suffering/Of one whose turn is now. Grief is a wanderer/Who visits many, bringing always the same gift.