At last you cry out in anguish: "Why me?" God answers: "Why not?"
You can so stand it.
After all, it's only pain.
What makes it seem unbearable is your mistaken belief that it can be cured.
~Sheldon Kopp, 1979 [1]
Legal cases often involve damages for "pain and suffering" to compensate people for the wrongs they've been subjected to. But I think it's useful to distinguish between the two terms and regard them as different aspects of the human experience. In this context, pain is mandatory. It isn't just on the menu--it comes with every order, and we can't send it back. But suffering is optional. It's something we choose, although often without realizing it.
Pain is mandatory for a number of reasons. First, it's needed to keep us safe. We identify sources of physical and psychological pain very early in life, and (usually) we learn to avoid them. There are people with genetic mutations who don't feel pain, and such a condition might sound enviable until we learn that these people constantly break bones and burn themselves without even realizing it. [2] An inability to feel pain is incredibly dangerous, and we can readily grasp why the capacity for pain conferred an evolutionary advantage on our distant ancestors.
Pain results from our nature as organic beings who are prone to physical frailty. We tend to forget this aspect of life until it becomes impossible to ignore it. If we're fortunate, our experience with painful injuries and health issues are delayed, but a hidden cost of that good fortune is the mistaken belief that we've somehow been spared this fate. (My friend and colleague Joe Dunn has observed that in our 40s we slowly become "old young people," and in our 50s we're suddenly "young old people," and that's a perfect description of my last decade.)
Pain is a by-product of the inadequacy we feel when we compare ourselves to others. Neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman has suggested that whenever we're not preoccupied with a specific task, our brains rely upon a "default network" whose focus is "social cognition [which entails] thinking about other people, oneself, and the relationship of oneself to other people." [3] As a result, psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky has noted that "it's impossible not to compare ourselves with others... Social comparisons arise naturally, automatically, and effortlessly." [4]
And pain springs from the fact that we're finite creatures with infinite psychological appetites. Anthropologist and philosopher Ernest Becker observed that "the essence of man is really his paradoxical nature, the fact that he is half animal and half symbolic," and our symbolic selves are essentially bottomless pits of need. [5] Our craving for attention, our acquisitive impulses, even our sexual drive are all manifestations of a futile but determined effort to transcend mortality, and are thus reliable sources of pain when we inevitably fall short of our yearnings and aspirations. [6]
In contrast, suffering is a consequence of how we view our pain. Suffering can magnify pain, making it worse and more intense. And suffering can extend pain, transforming it from an aspect of life that comes and goes into a continuous state, or even a way of being. But we can be deliberate and intentional in deciding how to view our pain, and in that sense suffering is optional.
We choose to suffer when we fail to learn from experience and identify sources of pain that might be avoided in the future. This can be a particular challenge for extreme optimists, who may seek to suppress negative emotions associated with setbacks. [7] But at various times we're all subject to a tendency to discount or ignore these feelings, and yet in so doing we condemn ourselves to repeat the same mistakes. Instead, we can accept and learn from our failures.
We choose to suffer when we strive for permanence in a fleeting and transient existence. There's an apt line of scripture inscribed upon the Buland Darwaza, an immense gateway near Agra, India, built in 1575 by the Mughal emperor Akbar: "The world is a bridge. Cross it, but build no house upon it. The world endures for but an hour. Spend it in devotion. The rest is unseen." [8] Whatever our spiritual beliefs, we can acknowledge that our efforts in this existence are impermanent, and rather than resist the inescapable, we can embrace mortality.
We choose to suffer when we cling to control and refuse to accept limits on our agency. We can take substantial steps to influence many aspects of experience, including our subjective sense of well-being, but those efforts will not protect us from pain. [9] As the Buddhist author Pema Chödrön has noted, "Sooner or later, we're going to have an experience that we can't control: our house is going to burn down, someone we love is going to die, we're going to find out we have cancer, a brick is going to fall out of the sky and hit us on the head." [10] Rather than fruitlessly insisting on total control, we can seek out pockets of agency.
And we choose to suffer when we imagine that we should be free from pain. It's understandable that we might wish to eliminate the sources of pain noted above, but we should also consider the gifts that accompany the pain they bequeath us. Physical pain teaches us to stay safe and free from harm. The pain of mortality is what makes this existence meaningful. The pain of falling short in our comparison with others and in our own self-assessment keeps us moving forward, a state that is undoubtedly a "feature" for the species, even if we as individuals experience it as a "bug." The idea that we might enjoy these gifts painlessly is a form of magical thinking.
I'm not suggesting that we should cease efforts to alleviate pain, our own or that of others. But as psychotherapist Sheldon Kopp was keenly aware, our "mistaken belief that it can be cured" is what makes pain unbearable.
Footnotes
[1] What Took You So Long? (Sheldon Kopp and Claire Flanders, 1979)
- On page 60 of Joan Tollifson's 2019 memoir, Death: The End of Self-Improvement, she attributes a similar line to her teacher Charlotte Joko Beck, but fails to provide a source. This seems worth noting (if only to recommend Tollifson's deeply moving and very funny book), but I'll continue to credit Kopp, as the line is certainly consistent with his overall philosophy.
[2] A family in Italy doesn't feel pain because of a gene mutation. (Jessica Hamzelou, NewScientist, 2017)
[3] Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, page 18 (Matthew Lieberman, 2013)
[4] The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does, pages 131-132 (Sonja Lyubomirsky, 2014)
[5] The Denial of Death, page 26 (Ernest Becker, 1974)
[6] Sex, Fame, Money and Death
[7] The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live--and How You Can Change Them (Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley, 2012)
[8] For more on the Buland Darwaza, see the British Library's Online Gallery and this Guardian review of Tarif Khalidi's The Muslim Jesus by William Dalyremple (2001). The latter two sources use the same translation found on Wikipedia, but I prefer the slightly different version quoted by historian Michael Woods in Episode 2 of his epic series Legacy: The Origins of Civilization (2002).
[10] When Things Fall Apart, page 70 (Pema Chödrön, 1997)
For Further Reading
The Ruling Out of Possibilities (On Failure)
Not Every End Is a Goal (On Midlife Malaise)
The Traps We Set for Ourselves
Photo by Matthew Rutledge.
