Pain and suffering – inseparable parts of life?

Pain is an unavoidable part of life. No one will be spared. All of us will have to carry our own measure of pain. And perhaps not only once but many times. Those who focus mostly on body functions may think that physical pain is the great torment while the more mental oriented person may put more emphasis on emotional pain. But everyone who has to to carry the burden of pain for some time will come to the experience that there is no absolute border between body and mind in this respect.

We usually associate physical pain with injury or physical illness. Mental pain is instead associated with basic feelings of loss and sorrow, unrest and anxiety, fear and anger. Also guilt, shame and bitterness can be a part of mental pain but are in reality variations of the basic feelings. Guilt can for example be a mixture of both sorrow and fear, based on a contrast between my self-perception and my actions. Shame may be understood as social fear triggered by a presumed negative difference of human dignity, or social value, between myself and others. Bitterness is usually born out of unresolved anger.

If we are afflicted by persistent pain for some time the border between body and mind will dissolve more and more until it becomes difficult to distinguish between the physical part and the mental part of the pain. The reason for this is that pain itself actually never is situated in the tissues and organs of the body. There we have injuries, inflammations and chemical processes but these are not the same as the experience of pain. If we perhaps exclude the brain, which still is part of the body, we can state that no pain is situated in the body itself. We only feel that the pain is situated there. The experience of pain has to do with brain and mind who seem to cooperate in this. It is hard to say which of them is playing the leading part. Modern science puts the responsibility on the brain.

However this may be, one thing seems to be certain: prolonged physical pain creates mental pain and both will activate the stress system which in turn affects the function of tissues and organs who then send more disturbing signals to the brain, and so on. A vicious circle emerges. But we must understand that physical processes sending signals to the brain are not the pain itself. They are material for creating an experience of pain.

Pain, within this meaning has always been considered to have a connection to suffering, as well as suffering has been connected with pain. In modern culture pain is often seen as equal to suffering. But there is a difference between these two types of experience. We can feel a certain amount of pain and learn to tolerate it without considering that we suffer. It is easy to recognise this in a person. She conveys something else to us than those who suffer. Still, both pain and suffering are so often a mixed experience. But why do some individuals experiencing pain feel that they suffer and others not?

There is much written about this riddle. But that which can be described and measured from the outside usually can’t tell anything about the real nature of pain and suffering. Perhaps poets are getting closer to this than scientists. It seems to be necessary to have experienced pain and suffering in order to understand their nature.

The anatomy of suffering looks perhaps like this:

Some factors may be required for an experience of pain to turn into suffering. In many cases one of these factors is a deep feeling of loss of personal freedom and loss of a granted place in life. This can amount to a feeling of no longer being part of the human society, or of existence as a whole. In summary: a loss of this deep, but elusive, feeling of the right to be and to belong which perhaps can be understood as the spontaneous awareness of our innermost identity. Some would call it our spiritual identity. There is no need to analyse this feeling of both being a natural part of everything and in the same time being a unique individual among others. We are spontaneously aware of it as a feeling of freedom, of lightness, of joy and confidence, influencing all experience of self and life. It brings us the assurance to be loved and to be able to love and, above all, a belief that borders can be surpassed, even if this must be with pain. A belief that absolute borders do not exist. This feeling is a complete contrast to the feeling of confinement, lack of space and loss of freedom which is characteristic for suffering.

When pain turns into suffering we do not lose our innermost, our spiritual, identity. But we lose our belief in it. We can learn this from people who have come back from their suffering. When they rediscover their belief in this subtle experience of self and world they always recognise it, knowing that it existed in them all the time, even if they could not get a grip on it. So, if we lose contact with this deep and essential confidence in who and what and where we are, a long standing physical, or mental, experience of pain will become too heavy to bear. We will have to face an ever growing feeling of confinement and a decreasing sense of purpose and meaning. And here we may lay down and give up our hope, or we choose to fight against the unavoidable and waste the energy we have left.

These insights are not new. They are part of our long history and of knowledge gathered for long times. What makes it difficult to agree on them is a linguistic confusion about the term ”suffering”. This word can be defined in many ways. For some is every misfortune a pain and every pain is suffering. Others make a clear difference between suffering and pain. Still others do not even think of pain when they define suffering.

What, then, is the significance of this deep knowledge of an innermost identity, if conscious or subconscious, which has such great importance for our viability?

Ideas on this transcendent dimension of our experience of identity are found in many mythical tales and religions. In the Christian religion this is illustrated by emphasis laid on the belief that the ultimate principle, God, is love and that everything is created out of this love. Such an image can meet our need to be someone, to exist, and it can still our anxiety to lose this, all a consequence of our awareness of self and death.

Love is an often misused word but it refers to all that which we find to be essentially good. To be seen, and to see with loving eyes, gives us an innermost assurance of the absolute right to exist and to be what we are. In the beginning of its life every child lives with this assurance, of course without being consciously aware of it. Sooner or later the child’s belief in being so unconditionally loved may falter. There are many causes for this, but in the end everyone of them can become a factor which later on in life can turn the experience of pain to an experience of suffering.

An inevitable circle is closing. We need to be seen and accepted, be loved, from our first moment on this earth. But we can never escape the experience of pain which is one of the basic principles of life. This must be seen as good because pain teaches living creatures to avoid danger. In this sense pain preserves life. But if we let the pain make us forget our innermost identity, our absolute human value, we will also forget what we really are in this dimension and that nothing can take away the fact that we are part of all and everything is part of us. We belong, whether we accept this or not. A problem in life, which could be overcome, may then throw us into suffering and as a consequence we shrink and dwindle as persons. In such a situation we have to open ourselves anew to this we had all the time but could not believe in: that we are free to make a choice and that there is meaning with everyone of us. We can give ourselves an inner image of being a drop in an endless sea of coherence and meaning. A sea which we in reality never have left. Even if living in a body and in this world is a guaranty for pain, sometimes severe, we will know where we are at home. In one of his books Viktor Frankl has written that ”suffering ceases to be suffering in that moment when we feel it has a meaning”. In this way we remain alive, in spite of pain and in spite of knowing that our body must die. And so no suffering can prevail.