MixedThe New YorkerThe Sweet Spot is in many ways a case for rational suffering, a guide to making life better through the measured incorporation of pain ... [C.S.] Lewis, like many religious thinkers, takes for granted that suffering is unavoidable, the price of entry into the human condition. Bloom acknowledges as much, too, albeit somewhat late in his book ... But the term \'unchosen suffering\'—which, as far as I can tell, is synonymous with what for centuries we have simply called \'suffering\'—suggests an exception to the rule. If there is a sweet spot between those who suffer too much and those who don’t suffer enough, his imagined audience seems to consist primarily of the latter. In truth, the line between chosen and unchosen pain is not always clear.
