Sometimes I have to focus solely on my physical pain, just so I can ignore my mental and emotional pain for a while. Mostly I just try to be numb, and stay up as long as I can bear before going back down into the darkness of yet another night where I want to not exist, and feeling disappointed when I wake up again.
We've taken the word pain and given it so little actual weight, for so long - whether we're ignoring the pain women are in, or telling ourselves someone else deserves it - that it's barely anything anymore. Faded and feather light. Like somehow that makes it easier to throw at people or brush away.
Suffering though. That's a big word. A hard word. A heavy word. A dramatic word. So we don't want to use it, even when it's accurate. Saying we're in pain is less scary than saying we're suffering.
But if we all started using suffering instead of pain, the same thing would happen eventually. It's the idea that's the point - the magical thinking that keeps Them clean and Us dirty even when They're actually covered in the mud they're busy throwing at the rest of Us.
And it's infuriating.
And as always you've taken your blade and sliced it open and eloquently poured all the horrid stuff out like you're reading my mind. Thank you.
Our biology has us wired to a giant behaviour-modifying electrode. It zaps us with pain to stop us from touching fire or chopping off our fingers or swallowing a pinecone, or betraying the tribe. But we are so wired up with this, and biology is so messy... that so much is painful that doesn't need to be. We didn't earn this pain, it's just how our minds and bodies are sewn into the world.
The Buddhists figured this out. Life is suffering by default. There's no escape. And we twist the knife all our lives by obsessing over what did we do to deserve this, or what can we do to get rid of this. We pile layers on top- on ourselves & our judgment of others.
And we’re not even very good at recognizing that others are in fact in pain. I’m pretty visible: I use a wheelchair almost all the time, can barely walk with a walker, have scars all up and down my back from spine surgery, and have braces on my wrists because of carpal tunnel for the 3rd time. And yet I have to forcefully remind even healthcare professionals that people like me suffer chronic pain that limits their movements and interrupts their sleep, when it allows them to go to sleep at all. So it isn’t even my fault until people have gotten past the idea that it really isn’t there at all. Sure people blame others for their pain, but they’d rather not think about others’ pain at all, because their own is so much more grievous.
The fact that we as a society so often ignore emotional/mental/psychological (all three words bc they all blend with each other) magnifies such pain in those who feel it (I suspect).
I know that the relative dismissal of such pain has magnified my own. The unwritten meme seems to be something like 'it's not physical, just walk it off, or laugh it off, it's not *real*," and that callously diminishes significant pain and forces people feeling it to tamp down their expression - and therefore their healing and ability to live well - for years.
I am so uninformed that every time I find something out it seems terribly meaningful until I discover that everyone else knew it all along and had seamlessly integrated it into the world view while still learning to walk. The thing I learnt from (of course) a podcast the other day was that oxygen is a terrible substance to use for survival, that the act of breathing is actually incredibly harsh on our cells and is probably a big part of the explanation of why we die so very quickly. And your essay made me think of that.
My gosh blistering and absolute truth! I had to read your words more than once to fully absorb it all. It felt like you really poured your heart out on the page, and I heard you. How and why is pain such a part of life but it is. We suffer and endure with moments of beauty or mediocrity in between and live our lives I will come back to your words, thank you for writing them.
"The idea that pain is punishment is at the core of humanity's nasty little habit ..."
This article is true, and valuable. And it's ironic that "pain is punishment because you did something you shouldn't have" is exactly the evolutionary purpose of minor pains. Don't pet that cactus or touch the smoky glowing stuff or kick the wall - if you do, you'll get injured and hurt. And so our childhood experience is exactly that pain is punishment for doing something that will damage us if we keep doing it. It's a natural consequence - it's even more or less proportional to the badness of what we're doing.
And then we grow up and get adult pains - grief and betrayal, appendicitis and ectopic pregnancy and bone cancer - things we really didn't cause, and can't do much about - and we tend to continue believing what we learned as children.
And then, as the article explains, we turn it into vicious cycles and vicious sociology and psychology and sometimes even religions, and we hurt each other more than we need to. Because pain is not zero-sum. We experience it as inevitable (which it is) and so we think it's zero-sum, but it's not. We can, if we choose, reduce each other's pain. Sympathy, ibuprofen, food banks, there are many ways we can help each other, if we would only choose to.
To extend this fascinating topic, I'm ignorantly wondering if humour (not in any etymological sense) is intimately related to mockery of someone else's pain? Because don't all jokes have a victim at their heart?
Touching. Thank you. I'll try, as much as possible to use the noun suffering instead of pain, even if only in my head. Saying I'm suffering instead of I'm in pain, remembering the etymology.
Thank you for this clarity. Every time i tried to formulate my version of The Scream it came out like a bloody red stain or an incomprehensible poem.
Sometimes I have to focus solely on my physical pain, just so I can ignore my mental and emotional pain for a while. Mostly I just try to be numb, and stay up as long as I can bear before going back down into the darkness of yet another night where I want to not exist, and feeling disappointed when I wake up again.
We've taken the word pain and given it so little actual weight, for so long - whether we're ignoring the pain women are in, or telling ourselves someone else deserves it - that it's barely anything anymore. Faded and feather light. Like somehow that makes it easier to throw at people or brush away.
Suffering though. That's a big word. A hard word. A heavy word. A dramatic word. So we don't want to use it, even when it's accurate. Saying we're in pain is less scary than saying we're suffering.
But if we all started using suffering instead of pain, the same thing would happen eventually. It's the idea that's the point - the magical thinking that keeps Them clean and Us dirty even when They're actually covered in the mud they're busy throwing at the rest of Us.
And it's infuriating.
And as always you've taken your blade and sliced it open and eloquently poured all the horrid stuff out like you're reading my mind. Thank you.
Our biology has us wired to a giant behaviour-modifying electrode. It zaps us with pain to stop us from touching fire or chopping off our fingers or swallowing a pinecone, or betraying the tribe. But we are so wired up with this, and biology is so messy... that so much is painful that doesn't need to be. We didn't earn this pain, it's just how our minds and bodies are sewn into the world.
The Buddhists figured this out. Life is suffering by default. There's no escape. And we twist the knife all our lives by obsessing over what did we do to deserve this, or what can we do to get rid of this. We pile layers on top- on ourselves & our judgment of others.
An auroborous is an apt metaphor.
And we’re not even very good at recognizing that others are in fact in pain. I’m pretty visible: I use a wheelchair almost all the time, can barely walk with a walker, have scars all up and down my back from spine surgery, and have braces on my wrists because of carpal tunnel for the 3rd time. And yet I have to forcefully remind even healthcare professionals that people like me suffer chronic pain that limits their movements and interrupts their sleep, when it allows them to go to sleep at all. So it isn’t even my fault until people have gotten past the idea that it really isn’t there at all. Sure people blame others for their pain, but they’d rather not think about others’ pain at all, because their own is so much more grievous.
A very slight tangent to Cat's excellent essay:
The fact that we as a society so often ignore emotional/mental/psychological (all three words bc they all blend with each other) magnifies such pain in those who feel it (I suspect).
I know that the relative dismissal of such pain has magnified my own. The unwritten meme seems to be something like 'it's not physical, just walk it off, or laugh it off, it's not *real*," and that callously diminishes significant pain and forces people feeling it to tamp down their expression - and therefore their healing and ability to live well - for years.
I wish we were saner about these things.
I am so uninformed that every time I find something out it seems terribly meaningful until I discover that everyone else knew it all along and had seamlessly integrated it into the world view while still learning to walk. The thing I learnt from (of course) a podcast the other day was that oxygen is a terrible substance to use for survival, that the act of breathing is actually incredibly harsh on our cells and is probably a big part of the explanation of why we die so very quickly. And your essay made me think of that.
My gosh blistering and absolute truth! I had to read your words more than once to fully absorb it all. It felt like you really poured your heart out on the page, and I heard you. How and why is pain such a part of life but it is. We suffer and endure with moments of beauty or mediocrity in between and live our lives I will come back to your words, thank you for writing them.
That was tearfully beautiful.
"The idea that pain is punishment is at the core of humanity's nasty little habit ..."
This article is true, and valuable. And it's ironic that "pain is punishment because you did something you shouldn't have" is exactly the evolutionary purpose of minor pains. Don't pet that cactus or touch the smoky glowing stuff or kick the wall - if you do, you'll get injured and hurt. And so our childhood experience is exactly that pain is punishment for doing something that will damage us if we keep doing it. It's a natural consequence - it's even more or less proportional to the badness of what we're doing.
And then we grow up and get adult pains - grief and betrayal, appendicitis and ectopic pregnancy and bone cancer - things we really didn't cause, and can't do much about - and we tend to continue believing what we learned as children.
And then, as the article explains, we turn it into vicious cycles and vicious sociology and psychology and sometimes even religions, and we hurt each other more than we need to. Because pain is not zero-sum. We experience it as inevitable (which it is) and so we think it's zero-sum, but it's not. We can, if we choose, reduce each other's pain. Sympathy, ibuprofen, food banks, there are many ways we can help each other, if we would only choose to.
Simply outstanding. Thank you.
Sufferō ergō tibī sufferendum etiam est.
To extend this fascinating topic, I'm ignorantly wondering if humour (not in any etymological sense) is intimately related to mockery of someone else's pain? Because don't all jokes have a victim at their heart?
Touching. Thank you. I'll try, as much as possible to use the noun suffering instead of pain, even if only in my head. Saying I'm suffering instead of I'm in pain, remembering the etymology.