There's a tendency to swing towards one extreme or another with regard to suffering - either loathe it and avoid it at all costs or see it as an end in itself.
A quote from Wilde in "The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde" (written while in prison):
'Sorrow, then, and all that it teaches one, is my new world. I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned sorrow and suffering of every kind. I hated both. I resolved to ignore them as far as possible, to treat them, that is to say, as modes of imperfection. They were not part of my scheme of life. They had no place in my philosophy.'Joseph Pearce continues:
Each individual passion play of each individual life was but a dim shadow of the Passion Play enacted at Calvary...[But Wilde's De Profundis] overstates in its sorrow the place of the Passion, ignoring the Resurrection. The crucial nature of the Crucifixion is seen by Wilde almost as an end in itself and not as a means to an end. Yet the Passion of Christ, properly understood, pionts always to the Resurrection. His mysterious Sorrow carries with it the promise of a mysterious Glory. In his suffering Wilde allows the darkness of the sorrow to eclipse the brightness of the glory. The means eclipse the end.
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