Candidly Speaking 6/6/2022
On Living with Pain
The beast in me
Has had to learn to live with pain
And how to shelter from the rain
And in the twinkling of an eye
Might have to be restrained
God help the beast in me
- Johnny Cash
We have seen, in recent years, a rediscovery of the philosophical school of Stoicism. It originated in Ancient Greece and Rome, with some of its most well-known adherents being Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and Epicurus. It has some surprising overlap with Buddhism, considering the distance between India and Rome. Much of my understanding of Stoicism is derived from a podcast conversation between Sam Harris and William B. Irvine. Harris, who is a popular New Atheist, has written a book titled Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion; and Irvine is the practicing Stoic. They are both religious non-believers, so I would assume that much of the popularity behind Stoicism these days is due to the decline of religious faith in contemporary American life. Nevertheless, Stoicism is a worthy school of thought to read up on, especially if you are interested in philosophy. As far as I can make out, it emphasizes the management of everyday human emotions and sentiments, and detachment from the material world. To a Stoic, an emotion, good or bad, is a fleeting phenomenon, much like the wind; thus, holding on to it causes you to suffer needlessly. Likewise, a Stoic posits that your time in this world is limited, and therefore a measure of indifference to your mortality, as well as that of the fellow man, is necessary.
Readers should note that I am by no means an authority on Stoicism, and they should examine the works of the great Stoics themselves. Mine’s only a personal understanding based on a second-hand source. Nevertheless, I thought of what I learned from Stoicism as I came across this essay written by Leon Wieseltier, titled “The Wise, Too, Shed Tears”:
“The wise person,” Seneca writes, “is not afflicted by the loss of children or of friends, because he endures their death in the same spirit as he awaits his own. He does not fear the one any more than he grieves over the other.” For “all anxiety and worry is dishonorable.” Dishonorable! I scan those words and I grant the rationality in them. It may be that one day I will be able to regard the prospect of my own death with equanimity, not only so as to die freely, as the philosophers say, but also so as to find the words and the glances that will ease the sorrow of my mourners. But the death of my family and the death of my friends? I cannot do this. I will not do this. I will mourn. It is the failure to mourn that is dishonorable: a treason, a misrepresentation. The abrogation of grief by reason looks to me like the violation of a duty, and like an imperialism of reason. My tears will flow as a sort of somatic entailment, a physical proof, of my interrupted attachment. Perhaps I am soft, or insufficiently logical; or it may be that I hold a different view.
I, along with Wieseltier, am skeptical of Stoicism, not just because of its irreligiosity, but also because of its detached attitude towards life. Although reason is necessary to temper intense emotions such as grief and pain, it is often used to downplay the object of said emotions. Stoics favor the triumph of reason over emotions, “an imperialism of reason” as Wieseltier puts it, thus negating a core feature of human beings: we reason out of emotions. In the realm of politics, reason is always used, wisely or foolishly, to defend a set of cherished first principles. Think of all the great speeches throughout history: Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Churchill’s “We Shall Fight on the Beaches”, Martin Luther King Jr. “I Have a Dream.” All of them employ sound reasoning, but all contain a fervent belief in ideals that reason cannot penetrate: the triumph of good over evil, of democracy over tyranny, of liberty over subjugation. With the armor of rousing emotion, these phenomenal examples of political rhetoric are immortalized, as well as quoted frequently in lesser imitations.
All of this is to say that morality employs both reason and emotion, and it is immoral to use one to subjugate the other. So what does it have to do with pain? I went through several years of severe depression, and in those hopeless years, one of the worst things about being depressed is that you don’t believe that people treat pain with the degree of significance that you do. Even when I get better, I can still observe that many people treat pain as if it is merely a problem to be fixed - “Just put a Band-Aid on it.” I have mentioned the irreligious part of Stoicism, and as a former unbeliever, I can attest that one of the consequences of unbelief is that you find evil to be just another problem to be solved as well: with enough application of reason and appeal to self-interest, one can direct people towards the good, and evil will no longer be the problem that it has been. This is a gross trivialization of the eternal forces of evil and pain, which has plagued humanity ever since the beginning, when Adam and Eve thought themselves gods. No, evil must be fought, and pain must be contended with as it comes to you.
Even as an arrogant atheist, I find myself intrigued by the Book of Job. And as I rationally conclude that Job’s terrible ordeal is enough proof that God is unjust, another part of me picture sneaking my feet into Job’s shoes. What is most gut-wrenching about the trials of Job is when he talks to his friends, none of them believe he is a righteous man - they all think that Job must have done something sinful for God to punish him. Imagine walking up to a man in pain and tell him it is all his fault. “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for their’s is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:10, KJV)
“Magnified, sanctified be thy Holy Name/Vilified, crucified in the human frame,” sings Leonard Cohen. Christ does not want us to suffer - he himself took up the cross for our sins. Nevertheless, he calls on us all to take up the cross, to endure pain in order to love the fellow man. Of the three Abrahamic religions, only Christianity features a God who becomes man. Jesus would have made a bad Stoic - he throws a fit upon entering the Temple, and he suffers great pain willingly. “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” (Matthew 5: 4, KJV)
I have heard from someone, years ago, that the Catholic church opposed the application of anesthesia during labor, since the pain of childbirth is God’s punishment to Eve and all of womankind. I treat that still with skepticism, because it betrays a poor reading of Scripture. I am certain that bringing a child into life is very painful, with or without the application of anesthesia. But the mother’s pain is quickly subsided by the joy of new life. Much of today’s contention around the issue of abortion stems from the pro-choice side’s repudiation of motherhood, especially from its women supporters. Mainstream feminists, aside from their acidic hatred of all things male, is defined by its relentless prioritizing of career over motherhood. They believe that the domestic life is a comfortable prison, and pursuing a career will set them on equal footing with men. Let me be clear: I am all in favor of strong and capable women seeking careers, especially in fields traditionally dominated by men. Margaret Thatcher, an example of such a woman, is surprisingly a target of scorn by the feminists. But the repudiation of motherhood is also a repudiation of womanhood, for the pain of childbirth and the following joy of new life is what makes a woman different from a man. As great as that pain is, the joy must have been greater, because many women, like my mother, choose to have more than one children, thus willingly endures the pain multiple times.
I used to wonder if Mary went through labor pain when she gave birth to Jesus. I learned in the Catechism that the Blessed Virgin is exempt from such pain, as she is immune from the Original Sin. Nevertheless, she has to witness the fruit of her womb suffer and die on the cross: “Woman, behold thy son!” (John 20:26, KJV) Michelangelo’s magnificent sculpture La Pietà shows a young woman holding a fully-grown man. She is sorrowful but serene: the grief is hers, but the child is God’s. The Lord is with her, both as the sacrificial Lamb and as the Father accepting the sacrifice of his only begotten Son. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16, KJV) I started this essay with an intent to examine how pain has influenced my life, and I end it with an examination of how my faith imbues the pain I endured with meaning. For something to carry significance, the thought of its loss must carry great pain upon the thinker. Thus, the tranquility which the Stoics aspire to can only come from not placing significance on anything.