Inconvenient Pain

I’ve been thinking a lot about this for awhile now. I’ve had this title saved as a draft for months. These two words are so loaded for me; the ways in which we turn away from our own pain and the pain of others is truly heartbreaking. There are so many reasons why someone can’t turn towards another’s suffering, and I don’t believe it’s because they don’t care (in most cases). Our own wounding, habit energy, need for control and safety, plans, etc directly affect our ability to take on what someone else is going through. This all applies to ourselves as well, and the lack of bandwidth we have for our own stuff correlates to the space we have for another’s circumstances. I know for myself, it’s been terribly confusing and desolate when anyone has ever ignored/downplayed/ changed the subject/fed me idiotic platitudes and cheesy advice. It’s one of the ultimate ways to communicate, “not only do I not see you but I don’t even care to right now, because it’s getting in the way of how I need this moment to be”. In the Soto zen Mahayana lineage I study, this is considered a form of killing. It’s akin to obliterating another by refusing to acknowledge their experience. I don’t think there’s a person walking the earth who can’t relate to how shitty this feels, especially when we risk vulnerability by sharing our pain. Anytime I have opened up and have been turned away from, I have felt like I don’t exist because my reality is being tossed in the trash. It’s so painful, particularly when it’s from someone we love and trust (or want to love and trust). It’s sad to know that most human adults are unconsciously walking the earth emotionally injuring each other. It has nothing to do with a good heart, good intentions, or whether a not the one doing the injuring is a nice person or respected teacher or community member. Even really good people often have no idea how to wholeheartedly lean in towards someone else’s hurt. Wholehearted action and attention requires full presence, a quality so many have never learned and can’t even imagine. Emotional intelligence is a skill, and most have never had any exposure to such teaching. I certainly didn’t until several years ago. My language skills in this area are beginning to improve through the school I’m enrolled in to learn to be a chaplain, with the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. This is spiritual care training for the bedside based on Buddhist precepts, teachings, and principles. It’s unlike anything I have ever experienced. My classmates and I are always saying to each other how fortunate we are to be receiving this very specific type of education, and how our curriculum and class structure is impossible to explain to anyone not there. It’s a love language really, and it starts with us on the innermost level, a place that often never gets discovered. In order to love others well and wholeheartedly, we must learn and love the hell out of our own pain, in order to hold it and have it begin to loosen. Our own “stuff” is what blocks connection to others, so without turning towards our own pain it’s actually impossible to reach the hurt of another. You can’t cross a river that’s full of snapping crocodiles to reach someone on the other shore. You won’t make it. Those crocodiles are our own hurts and they prevent us from crossing over. So too, they prevent the other person from trying to reach us.
I can recall many times where I was turned away from and my pain was clearly unwelcome. Inconvenient. It was in the way. One such time that comes to mind is an incident from 7 years ago. Someone very close to me had just died. Very close. I was bereft. There was a family event taking place and I was standing alone in a corner of the room, sobbing. Someone in my family of origin who had planned this event looked at me with disgust and walked right by. I felt like I had just been run over by a truck being driven by this person. It felt cold, cruel, and callous. I felt totally alone. Knowing the circumstances and players involved, I instantly knew that my suffering was an inconvenience. This was supposed to be a party and my tears and mood were not in accordance with the plan. I’m pretty certain some sort of eye roll was involved. The message was clear: your pain is posing a problem for me. Where does one go when they’re hurting and they get a door slammed in their face? It’s a very serious thing, how our behavior impacts others. And I don’t even mean extreme situations like this. Innocuously interrupting someone (like I did today) or not making eye contact when someone is trying to talk to us are also injuring actions. The ways in which we cause harm, from the gross to the subtle, are endless. Like, if someone is struggling and I change the subject to try to fix it or cover it up with “positivity”, that’s not helpful; it’s selfish and points to me not being able to deal for whatever the reason of the moment is. What about uncomfortable situations makes me turn away? I can tell you that having grown up in an emotionally unstable and volatile extended family, anger is scary to me. It meant shit was about to go down, often including physical violence. I learned from a very early age to stay happy and quiet, and to wait out whatever storm cloud had just burst, then pretend like everything was fine and normal. To this day, if I think someone is angry with me I have to really work with the fear that accompanies those thoughts. My habit instinct is to flee. In my CPE class (clinical pastoral education) we do hours and hours of intense IPR (inter personal relations) where everything in each one of us is brought to the table. There is a lot of crying, and it’s the good kind that is clearing and important. It’s really intense and challenging. It’s the first time I have ever experienced emotional honesty, anger/feedback/ disappointments/disconnection in a safe and welcoming space. It took me longer than my peers to give and receive healthy feedback. It was a completely foreign concept. If I upset someone, I’ve been trained to immediately know they’ll abandon me (after telling me what a disappointment I am), and if I share that they’ve upset me, will they hate me forever? The answer is no, they don’t and they won’t. Why? Because these are healthy, loving adults who don’t shatter when things get uncomfortable. This is the most authentic space I’ve ever been it, and not once has it ever been mean, uncaring, insensitive, or led to banishment. I am so grateful to my teachers and peers for never turning away from me, and for the ways in which we are learning to turn towards each other, so we can do this at the bedside. I serve in a senior community and rehab center. I have classmates who are serving in prisons, palliative care units, and government assisted housing. Our intense curriculum includes these detailed verbatim presentations, where we re enact an interaction with a care partner. That interaction is then critiqued (lovingly but very directly) so that we can learn how to hone our chaplaincy skills, all in the service of others. So for instance, my discovery about my relationship to anger has not only been healing for me, but better equips me to deal with the anger of a patient. The world contains a million reasons to have anger. It needs attention and care just as a child having a tantrum does. Ignoring our anger, like ignoring the child who is screaming for acknowledgement and care, causes a massive divide that gets harder and harder to repair. Turning away from ourselves and others is not only not the solution, it’s simply not why we’re here on earth. We are here for connection and to serve each other. That’s not naive idealism, it’s the core of human life. It’s love, whether it’s giving a dollar to someone on the street without judgement or saying to someone in pain, “I’m with you in your suffering. I’m paying deep attention to your experience because you matter”. How can we say such a thing and follow through if we can’t go 3 minutes without checking our phones, or if we can’t even be here for ourselves? The more I learn how to hold myself well the better I can offer up myself to chaplaincy. It’s an opening, an inner shift. That layer of spiritual and emotional support begins with myself. I have felt a huge transformation and deepening since I began this schooling and work. It’s been a gift that keeps leading me home. It’s spacious.

Just as I can clearly remember many, many times where my pain was inconvenient to others, I can also pull up many instances where I was guilty of doing the same to another. It’s a hard reality to face. Accountability is really uncomfortable, which is why so few take a crack at it. But it’s a lot more uncomfortable to turn away from what we’ve done than to face it. It’s like shoving more skeletons in a closet when the closet door is already coming off the hinges. It’ll break eventually and the hidden, shameful contents will spill everywhere. There is strength and confidence in making a genuine apology. It requires us to forgive ourselves for being humans who really mess up, and to allow space for our shame, the other person’s pain, and to allow for rupture and repair. It welcomes in the other person’s experience instead of shutting it out. It’s the weakest people who can’t genuinely apologize. Their fragility in ego blocks any ability to admit they aren’t perfect. Humility is a very strong quality. Recently I have offered very genuine apologies to people who weren’t totally aware I’d hurt them, but I knew I had. It was scary to bring my unconscious actions to light, but these were incredibly meaningful and honest moments for all parties. Honesty is always freeing since it clears a blockage. It’s detoxification.
As I learn the ways in which I’ve been complicit in making others’ suffering an inconvenience to me, I can move about the world in a way that honors the purpose of human life. And to those who have hurt me and would never apologize or take two minutes to look at their actions, well, I believe they’re the ones who suffer most of all because the disconnect to Self is so extreme, resulting in great disconnect from others. This is very sad, tragic really. Moving through life in a way that’s blind to hurt is half a life. That’s not what I’m here for.