What tools do human beings use to transcend (rise above) difficulties?

The only thing I can think of that relates is song. When he was a slave he did not truly understand the meaning of the songs; they were "beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the power and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish." The songs were what truly allowed him to glimpse how dehumanizing and miserable slavery really was.

Douglass commented that he was astonished how people claimed that slaves sang because they were happy, and thus concluded that they were a happy bunch of people. A slave's woes can only be relieved by singing. It did not make sense to him to sing for happiness, only for misery.