You don't Know…
/You don't Know How Much I Hurt
The phrase, “Nobody cares, nobody knows”, is half right, all the time.
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You can’t. No one can. No matter how sympathetic, or empathetic, you may be to someone else’s pain, you can’t feel it. The nervous system only works for the individual.
No one but yourself will ever know how much you hurt.
Pain can be deeply conceived by someone other than yourself, though not actually felt.
Empaths may feel they feel someone else’s pain, but it’s all in their heads - literally. Strictly speaking, empaths don’t “feel”, someone else’s pain; they imagine the feeling.
Imagined pain will also be incapable of matching the the intensity of the pain being imagined. Everyone feels pain to different degrees.
It is improbable - but possible - that some particular someone, suffering from a hang-nail, suffers as much pain as someone suffering a battle wound. There is no way of knowing for sure.
Instruments can measure physical responses, but measuring devices have no way of detecting the mental pain that is actually “felt”, by either individual.
Curious isn’t it, we all feel pain, yet pain is entirely private.
The phrase, “Nobody cares, nobody knows”, is half right, all the time.
To care about the pain of others is more impressive in one important way than “feeling” the pain of others. Caring, when not feeling, is an intellectual abstraction requiring head as well as heart.
There is a scene in the movie Lawrence of Arabia that illustrates the relative value of head & heart.
In this scene, A reporter is interviewing Prince Faisel about what Lawrence is really like: Faisel replies, “With Lawerence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is simply a courtesy. I leave it to you to decide which is more reliable”.
Prior to this scene, Lawerence, renowned for his mercy, but in a fit of passionate rage, had just mercilessly slaughtered an entire unit of Turkish troops - down to the last man
I’m inclined to agree with Prince Faisel; courtesy is more reliable than passion.
You don’t need to know how much it hurts, in order to care about someone else’s suffering.
Decency doesn’t depend upon emotion to show compassion.
There’s a lot to be said for just giving a damn.
By K. L. Shipley
Website: https://www.eclecticessays.com