Sometimes, when I’m feeling especially sorry for myself, I go down the road of thinking that what has happened to me is the worst thing that could ever happen to anybody. But that way hell lies. And also, it’s just not true. Millions of human beings throughout history have had a worse deal than me. Just think of all those who have been kept in slavery, worked to death before being discarded as of less worth than an animal. Whether it be constructing a God Emperor’s pyramid in the sands of Egypt, being sacrificed on the steps of an Amerindian temple, or picking cotton in the fields of the southern United States, such fates were indisputably worse than mere disability. Likewise, the horrors faced by the millions sent to camps and gulags in the darkest moments of the 20th century, or the tens of thousands of Korean women turned into sex slaves for Japanese soldiers – let alone the rest of the long and ignoble history of sexual exploitation throughout the run of our species. Whilst it is true that I’ve become horribly disabled, I have done so in an advanced society which has the willingness and the resources to look after me; that puts me in environments where people’s role is to care, rather than to exploit or dominate. It could, as the saying goes, be a lot worse. It has been for many.
When I remind myself of these facts, it does tend to stop the spiralling of self-pity and despair. So it is useful in that regard. But I wouldn’t say that it makes me feel better. Yes, it would be even worse to be a sex slave, or a concentration camp victim, or a brutalised indentured labourer (just like it would be even worse if I was on a ventilator, with even less use of my hands than I currently manage to eek out). But knowing such truths doesn’t make me feel somehow better about the fact that my body is wrecked; that every single aspect of my life has been tainted or destroyed; that I’m reduced to a level of dependency that I find psychologically unbearable. Reflecting on the worse fates of others doesn’t make me feel good – it just helps stop me from giving in to the temptation to make myself feel even worse.
But one thing I’ve noticed that does seem to help, as paradoxical as it may seem, is when other people open up to me about the struggles that they themselves have faced in their lives. I’ll come back a little later as to why exactly this might be; to what is perhaps going on at a psychological and emotional level. First, though, it is worth remarking just how often this happens.
Whether it is in private conversation when friends come to visit, or via email from those who live further away (and interestingly, often from people I was not previously especially close to), I am taken aback by just how many people have been through – or are going through – serious hardship in their lives. Whether it is mental or physical, whether experienced by themselves directly or a close family member, there is just so much more suffering going on than I had ever previously appreciated.
I guess it is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that if people don’t tell you that behind closed doors things are in fact not going well, then one just assumes that everything is great for them. Not least because that is how it can often look, insofar as people tend to keep their private hardships purposefully concealed. Indeed, given how good my own life must have looked to a lot of people in the past, it is also understandable why many would previously not have wanted to show me their vulnerabilities, sufferings, and hardships. I can’t have seemed likely to be a particularly sympathetic, or understanding, audience to anyone going through private suffering back when my own life must have looked so good by comparison (not least, for the most part, because it was). Now that I am so manifestly vulnerable, and going through evident emotional hardship (not least because I blab about it on here all the time), I guess I have become a much safer person to open up to. And believe me, people do.
Which on the face of it might seem really weird, perhaps even insulting or insensitive. What good is it to me to know that many other people either have suffered previously, or are suffering right now? What interest have I to be informed that the world is even worse than I thought? Wouldn’t the decent thing be for others to keep their sufferings private, whilst I am given space to try and deal with mine? But it just doesn’t work that way. We human beings are far more interesting than that.
Unlike thinking about abstract historical cases of people who have suffered (and indeed, have suffered far more than me), having real-life others open up about their sufferings, in the here and now, does have a peculiarly soothing effect. Partly this seems to come from a sense of relief: that there is something reassuring about hearing that one is not alone, that others get it. Not necessarily for the same reasons, or at the same level of intensity, but close enough to make one feel understood. Given that we are deeply social creatures, for whom being involuntarily cut off from the lives of others is an inherently painful thing, being reassured that one is not alone, that someone else at least (kind of) understands, and therefore cares, cannot help but make one feel better. “Misery loves company”, as the cliché goes – but with a far more positive valance than the cliché usually implies.
Underlying all this, it seems, is that the great economist and philosopher Adam Smith was basically right about what he called our psychological propensity for “sympathy”, or what in modern English we would more standardly refer to as empathy. That not only are we capable of feeling genuine concern on behalf of others, and for their own sakes (that we are not selfish creatures who ultimately only care about ourselves), but that when we share the sentiments of those around us, we experience mutual pleasure in the correspondence of our feelings. If you and I both judge an action to be courageous, there is a satisfaction, a pleasure, in the very fact that we agree that the action is courageous. But likewise, if we both judge an action to be cowardly, whilst we both experience displeasure whilst thinking about that act of cowardice, there is nonetheless a remaining psychological pleasure to be had in the fact that you and I, at least, agree in our overall negative judgement.
One result of this tendency to take pleasure in sharing the sentiments of others, Smith pointed out, was that having other people empathise with us can be a source of psychological relief. When you’re feeling terrible, whilst another person may not be able to take away the reasons why you are feeling terrible, if they can make you feel that they too know what it is like to feel terrible, and so they share your pain, then this correspondence inherently generates an independent mental pleasure for human beings. That pleasure may not, by itself, be enough to make you stop feeling terrible overall; it may not be enough to take away your pain. But it can certainly act as a balm, a soothing treatment for (psychological) suffering that can make your remaining pain easier to bear.
When people open up to me about their own personal travails, they almost always preface doing so with words like “I’m not saying this is remotely comparable to what you’re going through.” That is, they want to reassure me that they are not trying to make a comparison; that they are not trying to downplay, or disrespectfully reduce the level of, my own present suffering. But in fact, it is almost always obvious from the emotional context of the exchange that they do not need to offer this disclaimer. I can usually already tell that they are not trying to downplay, or disrespect, my situation. They are instead reaching out with genuine empathy. They are acting on the intuitive human knowledge that whilst suffering is horrible, it is a core feature of our psychologies that when we share our sufferings with each other, then such suffering is often reduced. And so, they offer to share.
A great many people have shared with me now, over the course of what is already nearly a year. Many more, indeed, than I ever would have guessed had things to share. In a sense, it makes me sad to learn how many people’s lives are marked by having suffered. But I have at the same time been deeply moved by how many people have taken me into their confidence. By offering to show me their pain, they are trying to help take away mine. If there is more suffering around than I ever previously appreciated, there is perhaps also more kindness.
There is no doubt a lot to dislike about our species (just look at some of the examples above). But there are also things to treasure and be grateful for, perhaps even to be amazed by. For all the very real suffering that I have been through in the past year, I have also seen some of the very best in humanity. I would never have chosen this life, and most mornings I still wish I could switch it off. But it is not without its insights.
Sooner or later, a man must venture down from what, in the majority of cases, will be a figurative mountain. He must part ways with the allegorical flora and fauna whose largely implausible symbolic appearances have nourished his solipsism. As the slopes degrade into foothills he must ready himself to wade once more into the quagmire of the human experience. It's the braver way to live, balancing empathy for one's fellow man with enough self-preservation to avoid being exploited. A lot of joy and suffering is weighted in that struggle. I racked my brains for a fragment of verse that might embody this sentiment and do it justice. The best that I could come up with are the following lines from 'National Shite Day' by Half Man Half Biscuit:
“I try to put everything into perspective
Set it against the scale of human suffering
And I thought of the Mugabe government
And the children of the Calcutta railways
This works for a while
But then I encounter Primark FM”
My chameleon, Frederic, and I shared a very strong bond with each other. When he died last August I was torn up by the loss. A few days later I walked into town. I was grieving (nine months later, I am still grieving) but I wasn't visibly upset. The strangest thing was that, on three separate occasions, strangers randomly struck-up conversation with me – not about anything in particular, just shooting the breeze. If there was ever a day when I needed human contact, then it was that day, and I got it. I don't know why. My theory is that there is a state of being where you are at your most genuine and people pick up on it. It used to happen a lot with my grandmother. People would come over and talk to her. Animals liked her too. There was a blackbird who used to hop right up to the sliding patio doors where she used to sit. On the opposite side of the glass, it would watch Coronation Street with her. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself.
Empathy is often easier when there is an obvious gulf between you and the other person, where their struggles are more apparent to you. I forget exactly when it was, but I was in Senafe, which is a small town in Eritrea, close to the border with Ethiopia, inside the UN buffer zone. When I visited, the Ethiopian army had recently rolled through. Every building of substance had been wilfully damaged to the point where it was uninhabitable and no longer viable for repair. There was a very well-organised camp, presumably for people who had been displaced from their homes, alongside a Médecins Sans Frontières field hospital.
I knew that there was a stelae in the area, dating to the Aksum period. I wandered around, flashing my archaeology permit until a couple of men pulled back some old sacks to reveal it lying on the ground in two large pieces – a tapering, lozenge-shaped obelisk with a full moon and a crescent moon engraved on the rounded tip. I understand that it has since been cemented back together and once again stands upright.
On the way back to the road, I was joined by a young girl – probably nine or ten years old. She was herding goats. As she walked alongside me, I pointed to a low stump of rock in the distance and said the Tigrinyan word for 'mountain', which I can no longer remember. That was the extent of our meaningful communication.
I thought about her life as it was: Born into a dangerous part of the world; landmines all over the place; the potential for an incursion by an invading force a proven possibility; the extent of UN involvement, in all likelihood limited to picking up the pieces in the aftermath. This girl already carried a great of responsibility on her shoulders. She had been placed in charge of her family's goats – a major asset. I wondered about her education, whether she was able to go to school. One of the reasons the Eritreans were able to hold out for so long in the war of independence was the emphasis that was placed on education. In peacetime there might be other pressures that would keep children closer to home. I thought about what schooling might translate into when she was older. Having come of age and gone through military service, and hopefully been able to extricate herself from that Kafkaesque nightmare, what would there be for her? Panoramic surroundings often yield limited opportunities. I thought about her perception of the wider world; what her expectations from life were. When we reached the road, she turned back the way she had come. I looked for vehicle that would take me away.
In meetings like the one that I have just described, it is often easier to empathise because the points of suffering and want are more obvious. Day to day, when you meet people who live in the same town as you and who look more or less the same, it is harder to get a handle on what's going on, and maybe it is harder to sympathize.
Dear Paul
Yes, there's so much suffering in this world. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk and peace activist, said that suffering is the mud from which the beautiful lotus grows. Without suffering there can be no understanding of life or the gaining of enlightenment.
At the moment l'm reading ' Man's Search for Meaning' by Viktor Frankl. Have you ever read it? He expounds on his Logotherapy, which he explains as a therapy to help to find meaning to life. He quotes Nietzsche: 'if you have a why, you'll settle for any how' in living life. I like too, Nietzsche's take on 'amor fati', that we need to wholeheartedly embrace our fate, whatever it may be. You have a very tough fate-cookie to chew on...but as you rightly point out, so do many, many more of us humans. Like me! I have to deal with some major shit: parkinson's disease and functional neurological disorder which makes walking very hard and life in general a big challenge. I have had an immensely horrible day with a lot of pain and spasticity. Thanks, Paul! I feel better after unloading here! I really hope you got something even vaguely positive from my ramblings...maybe you feel like we shared? But l'd like to end by sending lots of love your way. From one suffering human being to another 🙏❤️😘