Why do we resist it? Why do we regard it as something to be avoided? We feel sorry for people who are heavy with grief or heartache.
Why?
I’m not referring to that sad lot of people who struggle with serious mental problems or chemical imbalances or whatever. My interest is in people who have, perhaps, lost a love or a loved one.
Imagine for a second that grief or heartache is the price one pays for being able to feel love for, or receive love from, another human being. A sort of admission price, but one that’s paid on the way out instead of on the way in. A bill that comes due for services rendered. Anthony Hopkins as C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands, seems to regard pain in just this way when he observes, after losing the love of his life, “The pain now is part of the happiness then. That’s the deal.â€
Is this a good deal? A fair deal? A worthwhile deal?
Maybe not, but it makes for a hell of a story. I think we all recognize pain and loss as part of what makes [i]other people's [/i] lives interesting. I would never read a biography of someone that never had any tragedy. Is that curiousity just morbid, or is there some way to apply it to our own lives, and say that our worst moments have somehow made our lives more fascinating [i]to ourselves[/i]?
You bring up some good points, Jerry. I too, often wonder what it is man’s nature that causes us to be fascinated and interested in the misfortunes of others.
Perhaps it is simply because we are usually helpless in the sense that we can do little or nothing to alleviate the sufferings that we observe in another person. Mankind in a communal-creature. By that, I mean that mankind needs the attention, dignity, and respect from other human-beings. We all know what we personally desire (that is, we desire not to experience suffering, ourselves), and we cannot help but notice when another person is experiencing the very thing which we are attempting to avoid.
And, like Uccisore already stated, suffering and tragedy are indeed a part of what makes life from becoming boring. A perfect world almost seems as boring as it is impossible.
I’ve always existed in a sort of awe at my own emotional states - it is even more intriging and refreshing to experience emotional pain than to watch it.
One theory about the misfortunes of others being interesting is that it's evolutionary - that is, it's advantagous to pay attention to and learn from your neighbors mistakes.
a fee for services rendered? my thing about restraunts is the easy of skipping on the bill. with plenty of others to go to for those who remember faces.
the dead are the ones who go to heaven… to ease the conscious of the dead? no, to ease the conscious of the living…
a place after death? but there is no proof… but you feel better believing in a place… and of course, the priest would be out of a gig if he couldn’t trick you into believing that you will go to hell instead of heaven if you fail to do exactly as the priest commands…
These are all things I’m thinking. And yet we seem to spend so much time running from pain, avoiding it at all costs. Why? Well, because it hurts dammit. Who wants to be hurt? It certainly isn’t anything we set out to do. We certainly don’t fall in love, for example, with the thought that maybe someday we’ll hopefully get to experience the pain of love’s loss. And yet later, as we sift through the debris, searching for life lessons, we come hopefully to the conclusion that it was all worth it in the end. Somehow we’re richer for it.
Is it really possible that happiness and pain can be so inextricably linked? Somebody, it seems to me, should have put up a warning sign.
Asked another way, is it possible to live a full, rich life (I know the terms are arbitrary, but so what) without a good deal of pain?
That’s probably not a general truth. Pain and happiness are indeed very inextricably linked, in the way that pain is to many people, in a certain circumstances, addictive and attractive. The unique explaination offered by Nietzsche on this, seems to me plausible and convincing. My interpretation on the Nietzschean explaination is that, pain is a relief mechanism of the will to power, set into work when the will is oppressed or offended. Pain can be overcome, insofar as you remain humane, it can be overcome in the way that it doesn’t not destruct your existential normality in the long run. Pain, given to the strong, is virtuous, same way as happiness given to the weak, is vicious.
