Where does it hurt?
On the suffering of others.
In Ordinary Human Failings the novelist Megan Nolan offers an unforgettable image of human suffering and our reluctance to witness it. It takes place like this: one night a woman walks past her sister’s room and sees her sibling sobbing uncontrollably. The woman …
… was appalled to feel a surge of visceral, repulsed alarm at the sight … She suspected that [her sister] was in far worse pain than had ever been known, suffering in the recesses of a privacy so total it was almost evil. She had never fully lost this terror of the private suffering of other people, nor the shame of wanting not to see it.
Nor the shame of wanting not to see it. This last sentence seemed to reverberate on the page as I read it, because it’s so true. Who amongst us hasn’t felt the urge to look away when we see other people, and especially people we love, in a state of anguish? In situations like the one Nolan describes, when suffering is not apparent until a moment of exposure, it can sometimes feel impossible to acknowledge the full reality of a loved one’s life. It seems as if our own sense of selfhood will be compromised if we do; everything we know, the truths upon which we build our own lives, suddenly gain their own fragility when we allow ourselves to acknowledge the suffering of others.
I was reminded of this scene this week as I read numerous obituaries breathlessly describing Sinéad O'Connor‘s many ‘demons.’ She ‘battled her demons’ said the Daily Mail, whilst the New Yorker described how she ‘seemingly struggled with those internal demons for the rest of her life’. It strikes me that this demonic characterisation of human suffering is just another way to collectively turn away from it. Demons are evil creatures that are traditionally battled in private, after all.
In The Nightmare, a 1781 painting by the Swiss artist Henry Fuseli, we see a woman who appears to be asleep. As we look again we see that there is a creature straddling the unconscious woman’s torso. It’s a shocking, repulsive image and deliberately evokes a sense of unease for those looking at it. The portrayal of the demon or incubus was thought to have been inspired by German folklores about demons and witches who possessed people who slept alone. Here we are invited to look directly at an intimate image of human torment and suffering: hardly comfortable viewing.
Obviously some people do report ‘seeing’ and talking to demons during psychotic episodes, and I don’t wish to minimise or downplay these experiences. But this discrete medical condition differs from the wider cultural portrayal of mental illness and suicidal ideation, whereby the lives of creative powerhouses like Amy Winehouse, Virginia Woolf and Sinéad O'Connor are reduced to a narrative of tragic torment, in which three gifted women were tragically overcome by their ‘demons.’
But when we look at accounts of emotional and mental anguish, when we choose not to turn away but instead sit with the facts of a person’s life, we discover a depth and profound beauty missed by these simplistic narratives.
To my mind, Sinéad was someone unable to look away from the suffering of others. Instead, she appeared to embody and inhabit the pain, not just of those she was directly related to, but of people she had never met. Children abused by the church. The trans community. A fan who had cancer. This profound and heightened sense of empathy was clearly a gift, and a large part of what made her such an extraordinary, prophetic artist. But humans in possession of radical empathy—which is really a deep love for humankind—often find that it comes at a heavy personal cost. People who feel things deeply sometimes find life, the act of living, unbearable, and I think this is partly because they feel alone in bearing witness to the suffering of others.
Is the ‘shame’ that Nolan refers to perhaps the awareness of this disparity? A sense that we leave some people within our communities to do the emotional weightlifting for the rest of us? And because we see the visible emotional toll it takes on that minority, we retreat even further into ourselves, hesitant to ask the question that the civil rights activist Ruby Sales argues drives to the heart of the matter: where does it hurt?
It’s a deceptively simple question, but one which forces us to think about the location of our pain. Asking this question is an invitation to be vulnerable and to make private suffering a little more public. It also implies that the person asking it has perceived a person’s pain and not to looked away, but chosen instead to sit alongside them and bear witness to the full nature of their being.
Ruby Sales embodies this radical empathy we’ve been talking about, and she’s still alive! Thank God. In an interview with Krista Tippett she describes how black folk religion, and the spirituals she grew up learning, offered her community a way to ‘control [their] internal lives’. Against a backdrop of segregation, Sales grew up learning spirituals with lines like:
I love everybody, I love everybody in my heart, and you can’t make me hate you, and you can’t make me hate you in my heart.
These spirituals named the source of black people’s pain, enabling her generation to collectively witness the truth and origins of their suffering. They looked white supremacy directly in the eye and made a decision not to be defined by their oppression, but by their love. Noting that there is a generation of black people beneath her who were not necessarily raised with these spiritual tools, Sales argues that ‘the role of public theologies for the 21st century, is a redefinition of community and our relationship to each other.’
Where does it hurt? When we ask this question we realise that the ‘demons’ we’ve been avoiding have familiar names: loneliness, white supremacy, heartbreak and grief. Far from demonic creatures, the sources of our pain are distinctly human. They are painful truths, but in choosing to bear witness to the suffering of each other we ask our loved ones to name their origins. The act of asking this question brings community into the darkest parts of our lives, and reminds the person in anguish that they are seen and loved. The question is a reminder: that whilst they may be alone in their heartbreak, they are not expected to endure the emotional toll of their pain on their own.
Thank you for reading today’s Murmuration. If it gave you food for thought …
Then do take a look at
‘s substack Roulette, where she writes essays about her ideas on books and life. Her new novel Ordinary Human Failings, is out now.Listen to Krista Tippett’s On Being interview with with civil rights activist Ruby Sales.
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Take care,
Grace
As an empath, I feel very seen by what you wrote. So much truth and insight in your writing!