Our Suffering and the Suffering of Others

This week, with people crying out on social media and in the streets, I decided to just shut up and listen.

Underneath all of the slogans and signs, buried under opinions and blame, there is the voice of suffering. The unheard voice of suffering.

Every faith tradition I have ever studied or adhered to begins with the simple truth that there is one thing that we all share in common and that is that we all suffer.

One of the most difficult things we realize as we grow up is that we must bear this suffering alone, for each of us suffers as individuals in our own individual way. Even those of us who know God still reach out for understanding from other people.

Sometimes it seems someone actually listens. For a moment a connection is made, until all too often the listener nods in allegiance and tells us what to do about it. However, to be truly present with suffering requires the listener to acknowledge that they have absolutely no idea how a person’s suffering feels. Or how they should best address it.

In the midst of the sirens and the helicopters and the screaming in the streets we must put aside all that we think we know better and just listen.

For the last few years I’ve been full of answers, and quick to engage people in debates aimed at bolstering my own understanding and agenda. I should have known better. I should have been listening.

Psalm 123 laments:

Our soul has had more than its fill /Of the scorn of those who are at ease, /Of the contempt of the proud.

I understand this psalm. I have been both at ease and held in scorn.

When I was 29, I was VP of Sales at a financial services company, collecting art, vacationing in Asia and Egypt, buying cars with cash. Then psychotic mania took hold and my bipolar disorder wrestled away all that I had. By age 40 I was on food stamps, one attic room in my parent’s house away from living on the street. Some people thought I was taking advantage of the system. Some people thought I was worthless.

When I was at my lowest I needed someone to listen to me. When I was at ease I wanted to help others. Help them and feel good about myself, yes, but was I listening? Do I listen now?

I have no comprehension of the suffering of the people who this year rioted in the streets or the people at home watching on TV complaining about them. They have no idea that they have something so basic in common. But they do, and from that we can hope for understanding. But first we must listen.

I remember, when I was at my lowest, that people would reach out and tell me “I know just how you feel.” That may have made them feel better, but it just locked me further away. They had no idea what I was feeling. They couldn’t. And they didn’t ask.

We all suffer as individuals. Even those of us who confront grave social injustice.

Proclamations of understanding often lead to recommendations and advice that only result in isolation, unburdening the ones who are at ease from culpability and enabling them to position themselves as part of the solution. But still, people are crying in the streets.

Suffering needs to be attended to, not told what to do or, worse yet, how to feel.  I fear that when we seek to change things, we don’t first consider listening to those who suffer the most. In time those of us who are at ease begin to rank the suffering of others. We assign labels of good and bad, just and not just, legitimate and illegitimate.

We in my neighborhood are among those who are proud. We’re fortunate and thought to have it easy. It’s understandable to point to those in the street and decide that their suffering is far worse than ours. But no one has any idea of the suffering that goes on in the houses around here.

In all houses people are ill at ease. It may be beyond our comprehension that those who hold opposing views from us may be facing challenges, too.

Unless we first make the effort to sit with the suffering of others, even those we disagree with or have contempt of, we will always be wrong.

I don’t care what you think about what happened on election day in the United States, you need to find someone who disagrees with you and just listen. They’re suffering. Just like you.

The impulse is strong to legitimize some people’s suffering and delegitimize that of others, but that’s not our place and that’s not our call.

Yet even as I write this I sit and judge. I sit and judge even as all of those same faith traditions I’m familiar with tell me that judgment, too, is wrong.

I should know better. Just when I draw on all my experience and education and just when I think I know it all, I realize I haven’t been listening. Not a bit.

Everyone suffers. If we empathetically and compassionately listen to each other, if we let go of any preconceptions we bring to any aggrieved injustice, then we won’t suffer alone.

Neither will the people we listen to.

Meditation

This edition of the newsletter was born of a meditation on Psalm 123. I read it a few times and sat with it for a long time after. To promote this kind of meditation I’ve launched the Psalms Meditations Project. I take one Psalm a week, meditate on it, and write my thoughts. Please have a look at it here. I encourage you to engages in this sort of meditation yourself with any writing that deeply resonates with you.

Perspective

History can give us an important perspective on our current situation. Today many think we’ll never get over polarization, the virus or a shaky economy. People don’t feel safe and they expect the worst. Turn to history and consider 1968. Dr King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. After King’s death cities burned in riots and looting. There were riots at the DNC in Chicago. The Vietnam War entered its most desperate and deadly period for both sides. Real white supremacists rallied behind George Wallace and made a strong showing in one of our most contentious Presidential elections. The Hong Kong flu pandemic killed as many as 4 million worldwide. We had no Civil War and we strode on to be rejoined as one people. Listen to 1968: