We who survive anything will always hurt
For the topic “Pain from Significant Loss,” Gabay Inspirational Forum on Pain, 30 October 2015, Ateneo de Manila University
A couple of months ago, a friend of mine asked why people are fundamentally riddled with contradiction, especially in wanting things. “Why is it that we want the things that will hurt us the most?” she asked. For instance, she greatly wanted to have someone to love, specifically a child of her own, but having one ultimately entails having one to love and having that beloved child grow up only to be separated from her when fully mature. Raising a child, after all, is raising him or her to be independent, meaning that you are raising a person to become his or her own person in time.
She presented another example: another friend of ours wanted a stable job which coincides with his passion in life, but having one would ultimately entail him to work his butt off, to completely excel in some projects, to completely fail in some, and maybe to lose his job if he fails too much. She gave more examples, like wanting and having a pet means that you will at the same time be happy with it and you will eventually have to watch it die, and at the end of our conversation I think I didn’t answer her question properly – I think I just said we want the things we want because we don’t have them, and having them means that we are separate from them, and therefore being separate from them means that we will lose them in one way or another. Which is not a particularly satisfactory, or encouraging, answer, I know.
I recently got reminded of her question when I finished reading a Joker comic book and watching several anime series. I got disturbed by how much I was disturbed by both the comic book and the animes, and tried to articulate specifically why. The questions I started out with were “Why can’t I be like Batman?” “Why can’t I be like The Joker?” “Why can’t I have Usui Takumi?” and then I had a long mental pause – is it “Why can’t I have Usui Takumi?” or “Why can’t I be like, or be, Usui Takumi?” You might laugh at the childishness or fandomhood of the questions, but I realized that the questions were not directly or only about the specific characters themselves, it was more about what I wanted to happen. Simply and more basically put, let’s start with the question, “Why are we affected by something we watch or read?”
One the one hand, it was a question of being and having something, both of which imply and are implied by desiring something. Going back to my friend’s examples, being a mother entails having a child, which implies wanting to be and to have; being employed entails having work, which implies wanting to be and to have. Desiring something implies both being something you are not yet or something that you don’t have yet. On the other hand, and thinking about it recursively, it was about what we are doing itself – we are watching or reading something apart from us (and that is the main condition why it can affect us); we are not living it, we are outside of it looking in. We go back to the first point: We are outside of it, we are not it, or we don’t have it, and that is why we can desire it.
Going back to the Joker comic book, the author Scott Snyder mentions the Greek root of the word scar, which is eschara, meaning the hearth, or the fire, in a house, connoting warmth, and life, as well as pain. That etymology is very interesting, in that it connotes that what brings life also brings pain. This etymological insight can be applied to almost everything in space and time: medicine, water, food, love, work. Everything necessary to us, it seems, also give us pain. Everything, it seems, gives us scars. If we push this insight further, we come to the fundamental condition why this is so: we are scarred because we live. Please don’t misunderstand me. This is not a fatalism glorifying misery and damage done to man, it is not a testament against life, nor is it an incitement to become sadists or emo kids. It is an attempt to explain, fundamentally, why we are scarred simply because we are alive.
The Latin πάθος (pathos) is our root for the word pain, which for us connotes suffering, perhaps something to be avoided and condemned. Pathos is also the root for passion, in the sense of something that is overwhelming, such that we are passive at the sheer, saturating face of it. Ordinarily we distinguish between pain of a lesser degree, like maybe a throbbing or dull pain (such as a minor headache), a sharp one (such as the pain of ulcer), and perhaps a pain with a capital P if only because it is not localized to a body part but is encompassing in a different way (such as the pain of a heartbreak due to significant loss). However, without talking about its degrees, pain is a break, a fissure, a literal or metaphorical wound, which is inflicted to something that did not have it before. In that respect it also shares its implications with the word experience, meaning to undergo something different, something else. Experience is always the experience of something new, if only because moments are by definition, momentary, and they can only come in succession, from one, to another, to another, to another. This continuous breaking is what we define as change and changing. Pain, because it disturbs the sameness of things, is also this change and changing. Following this, all change, and all growth, is painful. All experience involves pain, because change occurs. That is why everything scars us: what brings life also brings pain.
That is why the Greek pathos also occurs, at least in Aeschylus, as in the injunction, πάθει μάθος (pathei mathos) meaning “suffer and learn,” or pathos mathei, as a closely related injunction, means “pain instructs.” From our discussion above, because pain is a break, a change, it also alerts us of that very change, of something else we have to know. This is for the Greeks the paradoxical nature of pain: what we cannot think of obliges us to think. That is, while we cannot conceptualize or think of pain (because it is something we experience), it nevertheless obliges us to think and learn. Hence, “suffer and learn.” On a related note, and if I may push this injunction further: you cannot learn while you are suffering. You cannot move on if you keep thinking about moving on. It is only after the end of suffering, that pause of breath, that end of experience, when you can be taught. That is why "pain instructs" occurs as two separate words, two separate movements.
Experience and pain both teach. That is why pathei and mathei are inseparable: pain and experience are necessarily intertwined. The pain of loss is no different: in losing something, we are made to be aware of what it is that allows for loss, and what allows for losing is none other than having. We lose only what we have. In other words, the only fundamental break, wound, or fissure that can happen to the things we have is to no longer have them.
But we are also made aware that loss is possible because there is someone that loss happens to: the prerequisite for having and losing is a being who loses something he previously had. For you to lose something, you have to be, so that you can experience this loss. Therefore, whereas significant pain is always sharp, and almost always total in its effects, loss is always partial: you have to and will, remain, for loss to be loss. You might be changed by each loss, but there is always something that this loss and change happens to. That is the condition for possibility for loss and change to happen, after all.
I cannot teach you how to cope with pain due to a significant loss. Partly because what is deemed significant is almost always variable, and partly because it is more necessary, at least to me, for us to understand what allows for loss, and the pain that loss invariably brings, and partly also because it is pain itself, and loss itself, that will teach you. The thing is – as long as you are, then there will always be a break, a wound, a change, a fissure. As long as you are, you will always lose something. But something also always remains, whenever you lose what you have: what remains is the fact that you are. That is why in the third installment of The Matrix, when all of Zion is going to be attacked once again, Morpheus closes his speech with, “We are still here!” That is why you can desire, have, and lose something. That is why you can change. That is why you inevitably learn. That is why life will always scar you.
For what is a scar, if not a wound that healed? Scars do not heal, they are healed wounds. And wounds cannot stay wounds, they will ultimately scab over. That is because, and that is why, we are still here. We will be affected by something we read, or something we watch. We will want to be something, or to have something. We will hurt. We will be scarred. We will be here, until we are no longer here. That is, after all, what surviving means, and, following our thought throughout this paper, then we realize that we hurt precisely because we survive anything.
A couple of months ago, a friend of mine asked why people are fundamentally riddled with contradiction, especially in wanting things. “Why is it that we want the things that will hurt us the most?” she asked. For instance, she greatly wanted to have someone to love, specifically a child of her own, but having one ultimately entails having one to love and having that beloved child grow up only to be separated from her when fully mature. Raising a child, after all, is raising him or her to be independent, meaning that you are raising a person to become his or her own person in time.
She presented another example: another friend of ours wanted a stable job which coincides with his passion in life, but having one would ultimately entail him to work his butt off, to completely excel in some projects, to completely fail in some, and maybe to lose his job if he fails too much. She gave more examples, like wanting and having a pet means that you will at the same time be happy with it and you will eventually have to watch it die, and at the end of our conversation I think I didn’t answer her question properly – I think I just said we want the things we want because we don’t have them, and having them means that we are separate from them, and therefore being separate from them means that we will lose them in one way or another. Which is not a particularly satisfactory, or encouraging, answer, I know.
I recently got reminded of her question when I finished reading a Joker comic book and watching several anime series. I got disturbed by how much I was disturbed by both the comic book and the animes, and tried to articulate specifically why. The questions I started out with were “Why can’t I be like Batman?” “Why can’t I be like The Joker?” “Why can’t I have Usui Takumi?” and then I had a long mental pause – is it “Why can’t I have Usui Takumi?” or “Why can’t I be like, or be, Usui Takumi?” You might laugh at the childishness or fandomhood of the questions, but I realized that the questions were not directly or only about the specific characters themselves, it was more about what I wanted to happen. Simply and more basically put, let’s start with the question, “Why are we affected by something we watch or read?”
One the one hand, it was a question of being and having something, both of which imply and are implied by desiring something. Going back to my friend’s examples, being a mother entails having a child, which implies wanting to be and to have; being employed entails having work, which implies wanting to be and to have. Desiring something implies both being something you are not yet or something that you don’t have yet. On the other hand, and thinking about it recursively, it was about what we are doing itself – we are watching or reading something apart from us (and that is the main condition why it can affect us); we are not living it, we are outside of it looking in. We go back to the first point: We are outside of it, we are not it, or we don’t have it, and that is why we can desire it.
Going back to the Joker comic book, the author Scott Snyder mentions the Greek root of the word scar, which is eschara, meaning the hearth, or the fire, in a house, connoting warmth, and life, as well as pain. That etymology is very interesting, in that it connotes that what brings life also brings pain. This etymological insight can be applied to almost everything in space and time: medicine, water, food, love, work. Everything necessary to us, it seems, also give us pain. Everything, it seems, gives us scars. If we push this insight further, we come to the fundamental condition why this is so: we are scarred because we live. Please don’t misunderstand me. This is not a fatalism glorifying misery and damage done to man, it is not a testament against life, nor is it an incitement to become sadists or emo kids. It is an attempt to explain, fundamentally, why we are scarred simply because we are alive.
The Latin πάθος (pathos) is our root for the word pain, which for us connotes suffering, perhaps something to be avoided and condemned. Pathos is also the root for passion, in the sense of something that is overwhelming, such that we are passive at the sheer, saturating face of it. Ordinarily we distinguish between pain of a lesser degree, like maybe a throbbing or dull pain (such as a minor headache), a sharp one (such as the pain of ulcer), and perhaps a pain with a capital P if only because it is not localized to a body part but is encompassing in a different way (such as the pain of a heartbreak due to significant loss). However, without talking about its degrees, pain is a break, a fissure, a literal or metaphorical wound, which is inflicted to something that did not have it before. In that respect it also shares its implications with the word experience, meaning to undergo something different, something else. Experience is always the experience of something new, if only because moments are by definition, momentary, and they can only come in succession, from one, to another, to another, to another. This continuous breaking is what we define as change and changing. Pain, because it disturbs the sameness of things, is also this change and changing. Following this, all change, and all growth, is painful. All experience involves pain, because change occurs. That is why everything scars us: what brings life also brings pain.
That is why the Greek pathos also occurs, at least in Aeschylus, as in the injunction, πάθει μάθος (pathei mathos) meaning “suffer and learn,” or pathos mathei, as a closely related injunction, means “pain instructs.” From our discussion above, because pain is a break, a change, it also alerts us of that very change, of something else we have to know. This is for the Greeks the paradoxical nature of pain: what we cannot think of obliges us to think. That is, while we cannot conceptualize or think of pain (because it is something we experience), it nevertheless obliges us to think and learn. Hence, “suffer and learn.” On a related note, and if I may push this injunction further: you cannot learn while you are suffering. You cannot move on if you keep thinking about moving on. It is only after the end of suffering, that pause of breath, that end of experience, when you can be taught. That is why "pain instructs" occurs as two separate words, two separate movements.
Experience and pain both teach. That is why pathei and mathei are inseparable: pain and experience are necessarily intertwined. The pain of loss is no different: in losing something, we are made to be aware of what it is that allows for loss, and what allows for losing is none other than having. We lose only what we have. In other words, the only fundamental break, wound, or fissure that can happen to the things we have is to no longer have them.
But we are also made aware that loss is possible because there is someone that loss happens to: the prerequisite for having and losing is a being who loses something he previously had. For you to lose something, you have to be, so that you can experience this loss. Therefore, whereas significant pain is always sharp, and almost always total in its effects, loss is always partial: you have to and will, remain, for loss to be loss. You might be changed by each loss, but there is always something that this loss and change happens to. That is the condition for possibility for loss and change to happen, after all.
I cannot teach you how to cope with pain due to a significant loss. Partly because what is deemed significant is almost always variable, and partly because it is more necessary, at least to me, for us to understand what allows for loss, and the pain that loss invariably brings, and partly also because it is pain itself, and loss itself, that will teach you. The thing is – as long as you are, then there will always be a break, a wound, a change, a fissure. As long as you are, you will always lose something. But something also always remains, whenever you lose what you have: what remains is the fact that you are. That is why in the third installment of The Matrix, when all of Zion is going to be attacked once again, Morpheus closes his speech with, “We are still here!” That is why you can desire, have, and lose something. That is why you can change. That is why you inevitably learn. That is why life will always scar you.
For what is a scar, if not a wound that healed? Scars do not heal, they are healed wounds. And wounds cannot stay wounds, they will ultimately scab over. That is because, and that is why, we are still here. We will be affected by something we read, or something we watch. We will want to be something, or to have something. We will hurt. We will be scarred. We will be here, until we are no longer here. That is, after all, what surviving means, and, following our thought throughout this paper, then we realize that we hurt precisely because we survive anything.
Nerdy comic book references, check.
ReplyDeleteLogic rules, check.
Etymology, check.
Quote from The Matrix, check.
This reads like a classic Ramoya lecture. Kakamiss!