From the late 1800s to the early 1900s, live fish such as stripped bass and cod were transported by rail cars from the east coast to the west coast. The journey these fish were on lasted for several weeks at a time and caused a dilema of sorts.
The fish would get comfortable, lazy, stagnant and would either die or become so sedantary that their flavor would go down the tubes.
By the time these barrels of fish arrived in the San Fransico port, the fish were of so poor quality that they were barely useful for fertilizer.

A enterprising woman Ethel Brandorff had an idea. In the barrel full of other, comfortable fish, she would place a single carp.
The carp were irritating to the other fish, and nipped, taunted and kept the other fish ill at ease…. not killing them, but giving them a reason to swim, hussle and keep their wits about them.
The carp kept the others on their toes, as it were. With the new arrangement, the whole barrel of fish was in better shape than when they left their eastern seaboard roots.

How many times do we have a carp in our barrel? How many times are we the carp in the barrel of others?

We’re not here to be comfortable, but to grow and expand consciousness (to be the experience of learning about ourselves… the attributes of ‘God’

Although we normally define “suffering” as “ain met by resistance”, the site ''lessons 4 living'' has some interesting insights… and it boiled down to a symantec difference in the end.

ps The Experience of Suffering

Robert Johnson, a Jungian oriented author, pointed out that the word “suffer” comes from the Latin sub plus ferre meaning “to bear or to allow.” To suffer in this sense is to allow something to happen, perhaps, to allow ourselves to experience the responsibility for life choices which permits consciousness to grow.
When we suffer in this sense we are opening ourselves to experience the fullness of life�s diversity as a natural process of growth. Such a “suffering” with life must occur for psychological and spiritual maturity to develop.
Philosopher Alan Watts speaks to this point when he says, “Because human consciousness must involve both pleasure and pain, to strive for pleasure to the exclusion of pain is, in effect, to strive for the loss of consciousness.” Life�s goal is to increase consciousness; so, the temptation to avoid life�s legitimate pain must be resisted.