The Duality of Pain

In Consider the Lobster, Wallace describes the fundamentals of pain, stating that it’s “a totally subjective mental experience” and that people “do not have direct access to anyone or anything’s pain but [their] own”. If we think about this logically, pain is something that separates people. We cannot completely understand each other’s pain since it’s personal and it can be frustrating to both experience and witness. When we’re in pain, we want to be comforted by others. Dealing with pain by yourself is definitely not easy, and it’s also a matter of understanding. If someone could step inside your shoes and fully understand you, your pain, and your situation, pain wouldn’t be such a complicated topic. We know that this couldn’t happen though. We often find it difficult to reach out to others because pain is indescribable and cannot be simply explained. In this way, pain only seems to have negative effects.

However, we can confidently say that pain doesn’t only separate but it also unites. People come together through the pain that they experience. Having the ability to connect with someone through the similarity of pain experienced strengthens the relationship between two individuals. As weird as it sounds, you start to rely on a person who has a shared experience of pain than one who does not. Even though we cannot fully empathize with each other due to our personal experiences of pain, the connections that we make bring healing and make up for the fact that complete empathy is most likely unachievable. Through this, we discover the different layers of the concept “pain” and that it isn’t something that we can easily label and categorize. As Wallace says, “everything gets progressively more abstract and convolved” and because I agree with this statement, I will stop my blog post here.

Song of the week:

Kehlani - Honey // https://youtu.be/g9hXwScHqzM







This song doesn't really relate to my post this week, but it's a really good song. I recommend that you check it out :)