The Politics of Pain

I have a dear friend who says that my pain and your pain can exist in the same space. My pain does not negate your pain and your suffering does not negate my suffering. This is a beautiful offering in friendship but so difficult to see happen in real relationship, in community. Living in a community, that seeks to be present to those who suffer, makes this even more complex. Because often when we walk through the doors of our homes, we are carrying not only whatever fear, frustrations, and sadness that has been our own for the day but the sadness, anger and suffering of the city we have emerged from after a long day. We carry the burdens of the relationships that seem be more weighty because there is so little hope for answers to the questions they face, in terms of injustice or justice, poverty and broken social systems. So how do all these things exist together...well, whether we want them to or not, they do exist together. its really just a matter of our response to one another's pain, our response to the suffering of the city that has cloaked us, our response to the 100th time we hear about a friends struggle in the same bad situation that seems to have no way out. The problem of all this pain existing in the same place is that we often end up feeling isolated and that maybe no one truly understands us...the thing, our pain, which should press us into one another for support, understanding and love, often leads us to remove ourselves from one anothers pain and to deny our own.

We think in levels, whether we want to or not. is my pain greater or less than my neighbors? is the pain of the women at sari bari more significant than my pain? Can i burden them with my pain when i very freely admit that their suffering is deeper and more profound than mine will ever be? We think we can negotiate around one anothers pain...that's what makes it a political. The levels and qualifiers for our pain and the pain of those around us do not allow us to enter into to each others pain and we play the game of letting some else be in pain while not admitting our own pain. Or we feel our pain is more significant and we demand, in word or in action, that others not be in pain or we withdraw all together. There is a great freedom in allowing our pain and our suffering to exist together with the others around us as my friend Kim encourages. When we allow this to happen we find that we have something to offer even when we are in pain and there is something that we miss out on receiving when we remove ourselves from those who are suffering.

I actually do not always want to enter in incarnationally, with compassion, into the pain of those around me, and certainly not into the pain and anger that exists in Kolkata, but when i remember that all these things can exist together, I find freedom to be as i am and to let others be as they are, in the moment, in pain or not.