Josh van Cuylenburg

speaker

2,789 appearances 21 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 20 Sep

Josh van Cuylenburg’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 21 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 4.

Appearances

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The Imperfects · Our Phone Odyssey Begins · 19 Jul 2026 podcast

And maybe me feeling like this is an opportunity to grow, to learn, to notice more and to lean into it.

And it's a tricky area because I don't think you want to be sort of falling into a cult of suffering because I think that's quite easy to be sort of lured into this idea that you have to suffer to create.

As he says here, before subscribing uncritically to a romantic cult of suffering, it should be added that suffering has on its own never been quite enough.

Quiet enough.

In that it's easier to lose a lover than to complete In Search of Lost Time, the book.

So you can't just suffer alone.

You have to be open to the inquiry that can come with suffering.

So he says here, perhaps the greatest claim one can therefore make for suffering is it opens up the possibility for intelligent, imaginative inquiry.

Or what you can learn from it.

So what can you learn from the human experience?

He's written here, the stubborn recurrence of misery means that the development of a workable approach to it must surely outstrip the value of any utopian quest for happiness, which...

I've always felt like that my aim in life is not to be happy all the time, but it's to be able to feel properly and to be able to feel in every direction rather than to just feel happy.

Wow.

When I was writing about this the other day, trying to prepare for today,

I wrote this and I've already reading it before.

It's a bit corny, but I think it sort of sums up kind of what I feel.

So not to glamorize my suffering, but perhaps the suffering and low self-esteem is a chance to feel more deeply, to try and understand more about the world.

Perhaps this could be a gift.

And what I've learned to be true over time is that the more I can accurately explore and define my suffering, the more I can remove judgment from it.

The more I see it as a passing cloud from which a greater understanding of life can come down with the rain.

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