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Do you believe there is a hierarchy of pain? For the girl who lost both parents in a car wreck and then her brother to suicide, does her pain deserve more recognition than the girl who caught the love of her life having an affair with her best friend? What about the single mother of three who got laid off and has no one to turn to in her time of need?
It would be impossible for us to know the pain of another to the extent of walking in their shoes, therefore, can we really judge it from a distance? Can we judge the length of time someone grieves the loss of their pet cat? How long is too long? A few months? Three years? Who decides? Can we accurately assume any person hasn’t earned the right to be upset, that the magnitude of their sorrow doesn’t quite fit with the circumstance?
If you’re a human being living on planet Earth, chances are, you’ve experienced some form of pain. That pain could have made itself known to you during your parent’s messy divorce, in the aftermath of the fight with bullies at school, or after facing the most bitter rejection your heart has ever felt after realizing its love will not be reciprocated.
There are common issues, like job loss and heartbreak, and then there are the rare tragedies that we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy – school shootings, terrorist attacks, terminal illnesses, or fatal accidents that fragment entire families.
I was talking to a friend recently who said he was infuriated that so many people turn their minor problems into massive issues when there are people suffering from far worse every single day – waking up to the sound of bombs exploding outside their window, kids being taken from their parents and not knowing if they’ll ever see them again, or having to sit and watch their loved ones be abused repeatedly without any hope of rescue. Some of the images we see on news channels seem incomprehensible, and there is great privilege that those on the other side of that screen have without even realizing it. However, that doesn’t mean the viewers’ issues don’t matter. That doesn’t mean the person with that privilege, luck, or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t have the right to feel the weight of the world and all its ugliness too.
My friend suspects that there are many people, especially in Western countries, who are simply attention-seekers, stirring up drama wherever they can. Adults are seeking professional help for issues like not receiving enough validation through their Instagram accounts or having a fallout with a family friend. Though these issues might sound surface-level to the person on the other side of that screen, how can anyone be certain if they’re not running amidst the chaos right along with them? And yes, even social media breeds chaos.
Even if your friend is dealing with a problem that you also faced at one time, how do you know she has the same support system you had to help her through it? How do you know she was raised with parents who taught her healthy coping mechanisms? You don’t know.
Coming from personal experience, I can tell you honestly that my deepest issues involving assault or neglect didn’t compare to how I felt when I was intentionally isolated from my peers and made to feel so small, that I truly believed I wasn’t worthy of the life I possessed. The flashes of my past that keep me up at night, are not the stories of physical hurt, but of emotional hurt – stories of betrayal, abandonment, and deceit.
So, how did I respond to my friend who thought Western society was comprised of a bunch of crybabies? I told him, his outlook was narrow. Pain is subjective. If I were to go into the doctor’s with a sprained ankle, he might ask me to rate my level of discomfort on the pain scale – one being the lowest and ten being excruciating. For me, a sprained ankle might feel like a six, but for someone else who is my same age and weight, she might rate it an eight. Someone else might rate it a four. Who is right here?
Emotional pain and physical pain often go hand in hand. They both send signals to our brain that something isn’t quite right. If your signal is stronger than your neighbor’s, that doesn’t make you weak or a crybaby. It simply means you’re processing information you haven’t processed before, and it’s going to take additional time before you can feel like You again.
For someone whose greatest tragedy is his or her parent’s separation, that pain probably was intolerable in the moment. But then we grieve, and we process, and we heal. With each new signal of pain, we become a little more resilient.
Perhaps, if we could reframe the severity of pain in the lives of others to foster greater appreciation for what we have in our own lives, something good could come of that comparison. Aside from that, aside from gratitude, comparison won’t do much to make you feel better. If you feel sad in this moment, and even if you’re not entirely sure why, that’s okay. The more we compare our pain to others, the less likely we are to feel the weight of it and process it so we can move on from it.
So, feel it all. Even if it’s the worst feeling in the world. Let it come so that it can go. If you do find yourself making a full recovery, despite those shaky knees and that broken heart, maybe you can be the person on the other side of that screen who actually does something to help. You can use your pain, even if it doesn’t seem relatable at all, to empathize with those who need it most. Use that empathy to be someone else’s savior. Use it to be the person you needed when you were going through your own worst nightmare.
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Photo by Edvard Alexander on Unsplash
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