The Measurement of Pain

How is that we measure the pain someone has gone through? Is it when they're down and on the ground, unable to move that we decide their pain greater than ours? Is it that we recognize some events to be so great that we decide that our pain is somehow less than someone else's? Why do we feel the need to quantify pain at all? Who hasn't had heard "Well at least you aren't......(homeless, diagnosed with cancer, suffered to loss of a parent or child, or anything deemed harder than what you are dealing with)." How many times have you tried to minimize your own pain?

Now that I'm away I've had time to reflect on everything that has happened to us over the past few years. While I may not have been lying on the floor broken and unable to move, it doesn't mean that the pain isn't there. I'm just resilient, and perhaps ridiculously optimistic. Does that make my pain less? Does what I've gone through make someone else's pain less? Why do we have to decide whose pain is greater? As I listen to people's stories and struggles, what I see is a world of people who are all just wanting to know that they'll be ok. That they'll have a roof over their head. That they won't have to worry about where their next meal will come from. That someone will be there to listen to them. More than anything they want to be heard. Maybe that's what makes the pain so much worse for some more than others. There's no one around to hear them.

The best advice I ever got wasn't given to me. I overheard to managers arguing when one of them said, "You are listening to respond, not to hear me. I need you to listen to hear me." After that the whole conversation changed. Perhaps the reason that we quantify our pain is because we just want to be heard. To know that someone understands what we're going through. To feel that connection that so many of have lost in the day and age of technology. Maybe it's not what it is that we've endured, but whether or not we have someone we can reach out to when we feel like the world around us crumbling down. Knowing that even when we feel alone, knowing that we have someone who we can turn to.

For anyone reading this, know that you are not alone. That if you ever need a safe space to be heard, I'm here. You can fall apart, and feel everything you need to feel, because when we don't let ourselves feel, that is when the pain becomes unbearable.