Society and individuals often lacking in empathy

SOCIAL STUDIES - Published Monday May 11th, 2009

Imagine for a second that there is this low throb in the back of your mind. What if you could continually hear the same note being played without it going away for the rest of your life? How about sticking a pin in the back of your hand and leaving it there forever?

The other day I had a fabulous conversation with a local author, Ruth Maclean, about chronic pain. Following a gall bladder surgery 20 years ago she has suffered from chronic pain that occasionally leaves her flat on her back.

But that is not the worst thing; the worst thing is that there is never a moment without pain.

Chronic pain is not well understood by the average person. There is a stigma attached to it. We seem to all have this ingrained response which says we should toughen up and just get on with life.

I wonder? If something like I described in the opening paragraph was actually true for you, how well could you get on with your life?

Before I continue I should point out that depression is a similar problem in the way it is treated by society. Everyone tells you that you should be stronger than this, that it is all in your head, and you just need to toughen up, have a stiff upper lip, and get on with it.

Either that or you are imagining things. It is never as bad as you think it is, right? That is what we all hear all the time even if we have a cold. And in that case, it is going to be all over in a week.

One problem Ruth pointed out is that almost all of the time the people giving you advice on how to live with your chronic pain have never experienced it. "Imagine," Ruth told me, "learning to drive from someone who had never even sat in a car."

The real problem is not even the pain; it is the destruction of self image, the isolation, the lack of self confidence, the uncertainty and the frustration.

I know that people who suffer from depression feel the same way. So do most cancer victims, not to mention rape victims, abuse victims, and even people who lose their jobs.

I am not trying to diminish any of these things by lumping them together, rather, I am trying to point to a glaring error in the way we live our lives, and that error is a lack of compassion.

For whatever reason it is always easier to ignore someone who is having troubles; it is common place to minimize the troubles of others and tell them everything will be okay. Well, no, they probably will not.

Whenever something bad happens to us, it changes us, it takes something away.

And the rest of us go through life trying to pretend there is nothing wrong.

Imagine the courage necessary to pick up the pieces. Imagine what it would take to reinvent yourself after most of the things you understood to be true are destroyed. Imagine having the emotional courage to begin to trust yourself when everyone around you tells you that you are crazy.

One out of every four people in Canada suffers from chronic pain. That is, pain that lasts more than a few months and probably will never go away. Since each and every one of you out there knows more than four people; one of them is suffering right now.

What have you done about it? What have you done for them? How do you seek to understand them?

This is one of those things that all of us have to spend some time on. We need to educate ourselves so that we can get beyond the stigma, and beyond the expectations that are just silly.

For example, people in chronic pain have good and bad days. One day the background hum might just be one note, and they can overcome it enough to do something like work in the garden. Another time the orchestra of pain might swell to such an overwhelming crescendo that they collapse under the weight of it.

In the midst of that realization, these people move on. They love and are loved, they create and accept, they interact and empower, and they are right next door.

I wish I was a better person. I wish I could tell you that I am always sympathetic and full of empathy for the people I encounter on a day to day basis. The truth is, I am not, almost no one I know is. But each and every day I do try harder.

The only path forward is to continue to try and find ways to put yourself in the shoes of other people. That old adage, "there but for the grace of God go I" is more true that any of us would like to admit. I only hope that when I need people to understand me, I have given enough of my own understanding to the world to warrant the return favour.