Pain and challenges exist as part of the human experience. However, suffering is self created and is optional - it is how we react to any given challenge or painful situation that causes the suffering, and we get to choose how we react. The more we learn to choose acceptance when there is nothing we can do to change it, the quicker we move through the painful episode or challenge.I'd say the challenges exist as potentialities for our growth but the capacities for suffering exist because of our reactions

Suffering exists and will always be present and necessary in one's world, as long as one attaches importance to the phenomena of life. And all of life is phenomena. Nothing is real per se.

Once one realizes that all of life is a persistent illusion created by self, suffering is no longer necessary. And all of life, including the illusion of one's world, one's separate body and one's separate mind are all part of the one self. The division into separate entities is still part of life's grand illusion 8-)

In other words:

“A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering.” Buddha - 563 BCE - 483 BCE

Suffering seems to me to be a catalyst.

It forces one to confront apathy in all things. From the hindsight of a reasonable long life I can see now that Suffering can, like Death, be viewed as a friend. Much easier to do when 'the friend' has departed :)

There is lots of Joy as well. We just remember the suffering longer.

If you get up just one Sunday morning, not watch the news on TV, not read the newspaper, and not listen to the radio, but instead walk out into the morning sunlight and bask in the glory of the warm rays of the sun while breathing in the fresh breeze, alive with the morning dew, listen to the chirping birds, and walk over to your neighbor and surprise them with a enthusiastic "Good Morning!" followed by a great big bear hug and tell them you just felt like doing that for no reason, now go do the same to somebody else! You will find that the very same world that was full of misery suddenly changed to a wonderful place of possibilities.

It is Us and not the world that is what it is.

Remember the moment during the 60's when the US soldiers were standing with their rifles to attention waiting for an excuse to use them, and these young girls showed up with roses and started inserting the stems of the roses down each rifle barrel, while the soldiers were still pointing them over the heads of the crowds.

Such times are approaching and those of us who understand the power of consciousness and of the power of the individual cannot lose hope and get mesmerized by the seeming negativity of the world.

If this world is going to change we are the ones who have to make it happen.

Believing that we can is the first step.