Schooled in suffering, now I learn to comfort those who suffer too.
~Dido, The Aeneid [1]
The versions of ourselves that we typically present to the world--and the versions of others we encounter there--aren't necessarily false, but they aren't entirely true, either. We often present a version of ourselves that emphasizes our strength, our health, and our capabilities--the positive attributes that we believe will make a good impression on others and allow us to maintain or improve our standing. In this process we tend to protect our vulnerable spots--we downplay our flaws, we shield our scars, we hide our wounds.
This is to be expected, of course--people aren't always trustworthy, and the world can be a dangerous place. Exposing our vulnerabilities heedlessly can get us into trouble. But when everyone around us is acting self-protectively and presenting an idealized version of themselves, it can leave us with the mistaken belief that we're the only one who's flawed, the only one who's scarred, the only one who's been wounded. In that state it feels riskier than ever to be vulnerable, so we act even more cautiously--and thus perpetuate the cycle.
In my experience most people adopt some version of this approach to life, and it serves a necessary purpose as we navigate adolescence, come of age, and make our place in the world. But the inherent limitations of this approach render it unsustainable. It takes more and more effort to camouflage our vulnerabilities, and we eventually slip up and expose them, while others do the same. So at some point in adult life we come to realize that everyone around us is flawed and scarred--every human being, in fact, is a wounded creature.
When this occurs under the right conditions a number of wonderful things can happen: We can drop the armor we've been lugging around, and life gets a lot easier. We can recognize how much we have in common with others, not despite our wounds but because of them, and we experience a newfound sense of fellowship and connection with the human race. And we're able to heal our wounds much more effectively because we can do the necessary work openly, with the support of others, rather than in the dark, alone.
The right conditions don't always prevail, of course. Sometimes we expose our wounds to people who don't deserve our trust, and we find ourselves at a disadvantage. Sometimes we expose our wounds to people who are trustworthy, but at a moment when they're incapable of meeting us there, and we find ourselves alone. I'm well aware of the risks we run as we acknowledge our flaws, our scars, our wounds, and allow them to inform our relationships with others, rather than deny their existence.
On the other side of denial is perhaps an even greater risk--becoming fixated on our wounds and failing to surmount them, allowing them to define our identity and our existence. Maturity demands that we admit our wounds and stop pretending that we're invulnerable--it also asks us to transcend our wounds, to recognize that if all of our fellow human beings have their own wounds, there's nothing particularly special about ours.
The primal wound we must eventually come to terms with is our consciousness of mortality, a terrifying condition for a living being that deeply influences all human behavior. [2] As I've noted before, "Certain intelligent animals--elephants, ravens, some species of whale--do seem to indicate an awareness of death, but it seems unlikely that they're aware of their impending individual mortality. We as human beings suffer under that burden uniquely." [3]
Some of us come to this realization early, through accident or illness or the untimely death of a loved one. Many of us come to this realization in midlife, as previous generations disappear and our bodies begin to fail. And a few of us fight it off as long as possible, making every effort to overcome mortality, however futile.
A notable dimension of life during a pandemic is that we're suddenly confronted with our mortality in an accelerated way and in a confusing, public jumble. Rather than arrive at this juncture via our own winding paths on a timetable that corresponds to our personal growth and preparedness, we've all been thrust here at once, together, ready or not.
And under these conditions the ability to explore, heal and transcend our wounds is critically important. We can't afford to pretend we're invulnerable right now--that condemns us to isolation at a moment when we need connection more than ever. Nor can we allow ourselves to get hung up on our wounds, to imagine that they define us or make us special in any way--such childish narcissism has always been unconscionable in a world full of suffering, but doubly so when that suffering is so present, so visible, so pervasive.
But perhaps we can find another way--perhaps, like Dido, the noble queen of Carthage in Virgil's Aeneid, our suffering can be a path to empathy. Rather than isolate ourselves by hiding our wounds--or by privileging them--we can simply acknowledge them and make it easier for others to do the same.
This post is the fourth in a series on coping in the current environment:
- Part 1: Pockets of Agency
- Part 2: Aggression, Panic, Paralysis, Denial
- Part 3: Tumbling Down Maslow's Hierarchy
- Part 4: Wounded Creatures
- Part 5: The Legitimacy of Loss
- Part 6: Risk Calculus and Social Norms
Footnotes
[1] The Aeneid, Book One, page 68 (Virgil, translated by Robert Fagles)
[2] The Denial of Death (Ernest Becker, 1973)
[3] Feeling Safe in an Unsafe World
For Further Reading
Photo by Daniel Lobo.
