At The Ark, we don’t just train for strength—we train for meaning.
In a world desperate for comfort and ease, we ask a harder question:
What if the point isn’t to avoid suffering—but to seek it?
The Story of The grim reaper at Tehran
Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, recounts an old Persian tale in his book Man’s Search for Meaning:
“A servant in Baghdad goes to his master, pale and shaken. ‘I saw Death in the marketplace,’ he says. ‘He looked at me with a threatening gesture. Lend me a horse—I must flee to Samarra.’ The master lends him the horse, and the servant rides off. Later, the master sees Death in the marketplace and asks, ‘Why did you threaten my servant?’ Death replies, ‘That wasn’t a threat—it was a coincidence. I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.’”
You cannot run from suffering. You cannot run from death. And if you try, you’ll find you’ve spent your life sprinting in circles—only to meet the very thing you feared at the appointed hour.
So instead, we train. We stop fleeing.
We face the weight. We take the hard road.
We seek discomfort.
How to Suffer
Suffering, when chosen, becomes something sacred. It is a proving ground—a refining fire.
Don’t ask to be spared from suffering. Ask for the strength to endure it with dignity.
That’s what we’re practicing every time we show up: to suffer well, with awareness. We choose suffering not because we are victims, but because we’re becoming something more.
Pain teaches what comfort never will. It breaks our false selves and forges our real ones. It reveals who we are and who we might become—if we don’t quit.
How to Die
To train is to rehearse death—not in despair, but in discipline; in celebration of rebirth.
Every session is a small death: to ego, to distraction, to comfort.
And each of those deaths brings a resurrection: to purpose, to discipline, to self-control.
We do not avoid death.
We meet it with calloused hands and sweating brow, knowing that, to run from it is to run to it.
Worthy of Our Suffering
What if your pain isn’t random?
What if it’s your invitation to meaning?
At The Ark, we don’t glamorize pain. We give it a place. We treat it with respect. Because when you choose to carry what’s hard—on the platform and in life—you begin to live in a way that suffering doesn’t destroy you. It refines you.
So ask yourself:
When suffering comes, will I be worthy of its meaning?