Pain, Strength, and Empathy

On a summer vacation where we were visiting relatives in Egypt, a 12-year-old me had the worst "tummy ache" of his life the night of our flight back home. In fact, that pain is probably the worst I've ever experienced - not that I've experienced much physical pain throughout my life, though. It started like any typical abdominal pain, where I would just complain to my mom about it, and follow the "tips and tricks" she always gives me. But they didn't work this time. Sooner than later, the pain had escalated to a level I’m not so familiar with, and I was complaining and groaning more than ever. Walking seemed like the hardest thing in the world. I started crying at one point, so a relative of mine drove me to the nearest pharmacy to get pain pills.

The few minutes I spent alone in the car as he got me the pain pills definitely felt like an eternity. I spent that time moving slowly but chaotically, trying to find a position that hurt less. Repeatedly and so desperately, I cried my relative's name, begging him to hurry up, even though no one could hear me. It was almost like a movie scene where someone, typically a woman or a child, is screaming through a pane of glass. When he returned, I took a pill or two, and I magically fell asleep. I slept for no longer than an hour and woke up just fine. We proceeded to the airport and caught our flight back to the UAE. Regardless of whether or not getting pain pills was the best course of action to take in such a situation, they certainly helped.

When I try to recall this pain, I know without a doubt that I could almost call it agony. But I simply can't actually feel any of it. I recall not knowing anything but pain for a while. Whatever my eyes saw is now stored in my mind as nothing more than blurry blobs of color. All I could think about was "When will it end," and surely, I was beginning to believe that it never would. I took the pills ever so desperately, yet entirely doubtful just two pills could do the job.

However, I remember the pain of losing my friends that same year, better than I remember the pain from that night. I can remember dreaming about becoming an astronaut as an 8-year-old, but I can’t put my fingers on the most physically painful experience that I know to date. Actually, this disconnect from the pain started on the same night: the pain already felt so far away, so long gone, as if it were merely the product of my imagination. The one thing that I do remember is my helplessness.

Before such an experience, I probably didn't know what it meant to feel paralyzed by pain for just a little over an hour. It reminds how in anime and superhero movies, a particular trope is fairly common: the hero gets up when he falls. For instance, Luffy, the protagonist of the popular-for-being-way-too-long anime, One Piece, falls dozens of times in a fight, bleeding and bruised, but always gets back up in moments that portray nothing but his strength; it truly achieves a cinematic effect. To imagine being in his shoes is to imagine feeling like you have no strength. In no way is his body helping him but yet he moves. Somehow. The strong shine most in their weakest moments.

Funny to think that one can, in a way, envy a fictional character, but I guess I do because not only do I feel weak, but I've also proven to myself time and time again that I am weak. Whether it's pain that I'm fighting, or just the desire to procrastinate, I straight-up fail. I have learnt that when I'm succeeding in my life, it's typically during the times when I'm not fighting any battles in that brain o' mine. When I fight, however, I lose. Always. Remembering the pain from that one night reminds me of how powerless I am in the face of pain. And the past 3 years have been constantly reminding me, a couple of months at a time, that I am even more helpless in the face of temptation.

We all fight battles. And the way I see it, to be strong is to win something of those battles. And in the midst of our own battles, we forget about others' battles. No, we cannot understand their pain. "To have great pain is to have certainty. To hear that another person has pain is to have doubt," says Elaine Scarry in her book The Body in Pain. And as John Green comments on this quote in his book The Anthropocene Reviewed, "Hearing about pain that we do not feel takes us to the limits of empathy, where it all breaks down." Today, I can barely empathize with the 12-year-old me who experienced that pain. So maybe, to be empathetic... wouldn't be to feel the pain—as we simply can not—but to understand and respect the pain and the battles that caused it, as well as the battles it causes. Let me correct myself: not all pain is accompanied by battles. Some pain is just pain, and thus empathy still crumbles at the meeting of pain that we do not feel. And it often also fails when we watch someone in pain winning their battle, for all we can see is the strength they mustered in order to get up, and our eyes neglect the rather apparent pain.

We can see nothing but strength in them, because to be strong is to win something of one's battles, and seeing someone do just that convinces us that they're strong. And I guess that in the perfect world our subconscious has painted for us, strong people don't feel weak. They don't feel pain. But that's just not true.