This fall, I read the latest book of essays by the inimitable Zadie Smith. I always love her work, but I found myself so moved, so thought-provoked by these essays, and they have really stuck with me during this season. I have returned again and again in particular to one of her essays entitled “Suffering Like Mel Gibson.” In it she tackles a topic who many tremble to engage— suffering. Especially at a time like this, when so many of us are struggling and hurting all at the same time, it can feel even more challenging to address. Smith does it in a way that I have never thought to— by bringing suffering into conversation with privilege. She writes:
…both manifest as bubbles, containing a person and distorting their vision. But it is possible to penetrate the bubble of privilege and even pop it— whereas the suffering bubble is impermeable. Language, logic, argument, rationale and relative perspective itself are no match for it. Suffering applies itself directly to its subject and will not be shamed out of itself or eradicated by righteous argument, no matter how objectively correct that argument may be.
Smith, Zadie. Intimations: Six Essays. United Kingdom: Penguin Publishing Group, 2020.
I have been thinking about this ever since, how deeply true it is. It can become tempting to believe that we can understand someone else’s suffering, perhaps even slightly better than they do. We have perspective, we might think to ourselves. We have a bit more objectivity. Perhaps we might even think to ourselves that we have suffered more than they have, and therefore have the benefit of deeper understanding through practice. And here’s the thing— we wouldn’t necessarily be wrong.
But the problem with suffering is that it is absolute to the one who is experiencing it. That is one of the reasons it can be such a lonely place. Even if others who have suffered more, who know the contours of struggle more deeply than we do, approach us with compassion, love, and empathy, they still cannot actually enter our pain. They still have never suffered quite like we have.
I am also learning something that feels a bit prickly and humbling to say out loud. I am learning that I sometimes look down on the suffering of others. Sometimes, regardless of whether I mean to or not, I am moved to the opposite of compassion by what someone else is going through. Let me share a fairly common, low-stakes example. I have a chronic illness, and though it is by and large well managed, I have spent long swaths of my life in considerable pain and physical misery. And sometimes, when someone complains about having a cold, it’s rough for me! Something in my brain sometimes chimes in with “Oh, you have no idea.” It can be really hard to be compassionate towards them. It isn’t like their suffering owes my suffering anything. Their experience doesn’t change mine in any way. But it can be hard sometimes to move past that initial knee jerk reaction to the deeper reality: it really sucks to be sick. My extended experiences with that should deepen my empathy for someone who is feeling unwell, even if it is in a relatively minor way.
Right now, in the midst of this wild global pandemic, it can feel like there is a limited supply of compassion to go around. So few of us are at our best right now, and so many of us are very far from it. There is so much more suffering, and it can feel like we all have fewer resources than ever to support each other. I think that is partly why this essay struck home for me. If we can offer each other nothing else, what if we can learn to give each other the dignity of allowing each other’s suffering to have its own autonomy? What if we can bless each other by recognizing that each particular form of suffering is its own, and that we who do not bear it ourselves can only stand outside of it and recognize it as a land apart.
Whenever I think about suffering, my thoughts quite naturally turn to the book of Job. One of the things that I love so much about this story is that God makes space for Job’s suffering in quite profound ways. Job will not be explained out of his pain by his friends. Job will not even be explained out of it by God. But here’s the thing— God doesn’t try to explain him out of it. While YHWH tells Job that there is a bigger picture that Job can’t see, God doesn’t actually expect Job to see it, nor does God expect that reality to change Job’s experience of suffering. Instead, God, the one who sees the whole picture, joins Job in the midst of his suffering. I don’t mean it tritely when I say that Jesus is the only one who can truly join the bubble of our suffering. We are told that Jesus is a man acquainted with sorrow and grief, and we know this from the stories we have of his life. But Jesus doesn’t interrupt our narratives of sorrow to tell us about his own. We don’t trust him because his pain was worse than ours. We trust him because he makes true space for our suffering, regardless of how small it is. We trust him because he doesn’t explain it away. We trust him because he weeps with us.
As we continue to navigate this weary terrain of global suffering together, I hope we can take heart as we remember this. I hope that we can learn to reflect the heart of God by making space for each other’s suffering. Not by trying to fix it, or contextualize it, or diminish it by comparison, but simply by allowing it to be. By saying to one another that we see the suffering, that we see the bubble, that we grieve for the unique suffering that each of us finds ourselves in at this particular moment. What if we can offer each other the strange grace of knowing that what we’re suffering is on some level incomprehensible? Perhaps that is enough.
Wellspring 