Paradoxing Ourselves Into Self-Harm
Adam Phillips is fantastic. I never heard of him until Darwin's Worms in this class. I am sad that I have missed so much of him up until now in my life. On the same note, I am happy that he found me.
This quote really stuck with me when I read it:
"Indeed the implied paradox, if we were to generalize from these two reports, would be: sometimes we suffer most from being unwilling to suffer enough." (124)
This idea of suffering is endlessly fascinating to me. I'm not outside of suffering, I'm not above and beyond it in anyway. I suffer just like anyone else. The fascinating part is that I have learned quite a bit about it, experienced it a lot, and have found different ways to deal with it as well as different ways to prevent myself from causing myself more harm, but I still do it.
Knowledge is not a shield. Knowledge is not armor here. Knowledge is not a weapon. Knowledge is not even a guarantee of better preparedness. Knowing that we cause our suffering to multiply does not stop us from doing it to ourselves.
I'm certain culture plays a part here, as do upbringing and environment, perhaps even genes. I'm certain that suffering is selfish, ego-centric, all about the I. How else could it be? This is how suffering works:
Something bad happens. Pain is felt. [INSERT SUFFERING NOW AS THIS WAS A DEEPLY PERSONAL OFFENSE, whether it was or not it is treated as such].
Most times the bad thing is over and the pain is gone. Suffering is what we do with the pain. Suffering is not letting it go. Suffering is our childish grasp, our mine-ness, our ownership. If you call me a name it hurts. When I keep running that name or that moment over and over and over and over and over (see what I did there?) in my head then I am suffering. The name calling was done. Its long gone by the time I realize I have been hurting myself almost the whole time. Somebody hurt me but I suffered me.
Suffering I think appears to be a uniquely human thing. Animals feel pain, I'm not arguing what they used to argue about animals only responding to stimulus, that's ridiculous. I do not know for certain that animals don't sit around brooding and wallowing in self-pity but I suspect they don't. Perhaps I am I wrong. Until then, I'm calling suffering a uniquely human thing.
We don't choose pain but we, consciously or otherwise, choose suffering. Maybe this has to do with our Western culture (if one wishes to call it that). Maybe it relates to the over-abundance of guilt and the willingness with which we feel guilt in our society. We have been primed to self-harm it appears.
Unfortunate beasts.
Funny thing about pain, if there is such a thing about pain, is that typically if we feel it and let it pass it does precisely that, it passes. We keep choosing suffering though. We take it very personal as if the wrong-doing has occurred on some fundamental-being level, and not only that but it was meant as an attack on that fundamental-beingness of us.
But what good is this knowledge about suffering if we still do it? Good question. I don't have any scientific or erudite response. But I can say this about knowledge of what suffering is:
After my self-induced agonizing and torment, knowledge allows me to laugh at myself. That has to be worth something.
I just went to a workshop with Bessel van der Kolk and he had a great quote that reminded me of this post. If you don't know who he is you have to look him up. I'll post more of his comments later, for now I have this one that applies to my ideas here on suffering:
ReplyDelete"Understanding does not take the sting away"
Of course, I asked him to write that into my copy of his book which he did. :)