When we go through difficulties, we often hear some inspiring ideas like these: "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger", "God never gives you something you can't handle","Storms make trees take deeper roots", etc. In tough situations and especially in the case of my SCI, these quotes initially brought hope into my dark world. However, as I continued to struggle without much change in my condition, these ideas became harder and harder to believe. In fact, I began to actually believe the opposite. When someone would say, "Things will get better, you won't always feel this way", I often thought, "You can't promise that, things may very well get worse and worse". Of course, I appreciated the well-intentioned words of these people, but their words brought me no hope. Contrary to what these quotes promised, I felt as though my trials were destroying me. I felt hardened, bitter, and hopeless more than I felt any positive transformation of character. I felt anxiety that I might be ruined, that the Carson I knew would never return.
Because I did not improve emotionally or otherwise for a very long time, I felt little hope for the future, which was exactly what I needed to get me through. During all this time, my pain taught me a lot and this blog is a record of the lessons I was learning. Some of these lessons were about grief and loss, some about human value, and many were about love. Yet, all that time I was learning I still felt like I was slowly being corrupted by that same pain.
As a senior in high school, I went with a leadership class on a trip to Washington D.C.. We visited many of the memorials and also spent a day in the Holocaust Museum, which had a great impact on me. I remember feeling sad and wondered how humans could perform such atrocities. Last week I visited that museum again, this time with six more years of life under my belt, three of which have been lived in deep grief and suffering. My experience at the museum was a very different one. This time as I went to the museum I felt deeper pain, my heart was heavy, and in more than one moment my eyes were filled with tears. I have not suffered to the extent that the victims of the Holocaust did, but I have suffered many times in a way that his driven me to sincerely wish to die. I have become acquainted with grief at a level that my eighteen year old self could not have fathomed.
The most important part of this visit to the Holocaust Museum was what has lasted since. Instead of feeling only sadness, I feel responsibility. I feel responsible to become a person that fights the evils that begin wars and holocausts. That feeling of duty has remained with me ever since that day. As I toured the museum and realized the depth of feeling I was experiencing, I asked myself what the difference was between the two visits. The answer I found was in depth of empathy that was absent before, an empathy that only comes from living through your own hell.
Later during my trip to D.C. I visited the Lincoln Memorial. As I sat at the feet of the giant statue of the man that brought America through it's most fatal war, I wondered how someone becomes like that. I wondered how certain individuals are brought to a place of such potential to influence the world for good, and wondered how I can become that way. I've always thought in extremes and in world-scale ideas. If there is a problem in the world, I often feel a deep responsibility to fix it. I don't wonder who will fix it or how it will be done, I wonder what I will do to solve it. I had these thoughts at the Holocaust Museum. How will I live so that this never happens again? Always trailing these thoughts of passion and responsibility are the thoughts that challenge the power of one person. I tell myself, "You are unrealistic" or "You are one little person who has no grasp on the world, what could you do?" However, regardless of the doubt that follows, the feeling of duty remains.
There was an interesting mix of emotions running through me the majority of the time touring the National Mall and other sights. There was this constant passion to change myself and the world around me, mixed with a grief at what I am still facing in life. The trip was a physically painful one for me. Perpetual fatigue, bladder and bowel issues, ever-burning nerve pain... I just wanted to enjoy the trip like everyone else, I wanted to enjoy the feeling of wearing shorts. I didn't want to worry about how/if I could get in the building or where the nearest elevator was.
The trip was overall a success, and the flight home in the cramped airplane brought opportunity to think about what I'd learned and felt. I plugged in my headphones and listened to some TED talks. I listened to the mother of the man who started the ALS ice bucket challenge. The mother spoke passionately of her son who is now so paralyzed that he can't speak. And her message? The power of the individual. The influence of the one.
As I heard the voice of that mother echoing through my head, a moving part of a song I was listening to came up and I almost felt chills. Side note: A strange side effect of my SCI is that I don't feel chills when I listen to music, which is actually a great loss to me. I feel my body try, but it ends up being a strange shudder. This was the last straw. I broke into tears as this seemed like the harshest moment to remind me of my reality. With tears streaming down my face, I struggled to relieve the ever present neck and nerve pain through my body. I worked in my cramped airplane space to push my body up with one arm (I had a sprained left wrist from transferring). At this moment I experienced an epiphany and a clarity of thought.
I realized something very significant. The words I heard were, "My suffering fuels my passion". With increased emotion I realized that because I continually suffer, I am continually impassioned about life, love, and the plight of the human race. For perhaps the first time, I saw utility in my pain, both emotional and physical. My suffering never lets me sit in complacency, which means I am filled with deep feelings, for better or for worse. This does not mean that I am grateful for my situation. In fact, I despise it. I constantly long for and weep for an easier life. However, I write best, learn the most, and feel deepest when I am suffering. I have a constant source of fuel for passion; it's pain. Perhaps that will drive my love and embolden me most in my quest to change the world.
This changed my perception of pain from being something totally destructive to something terrible, yes, but possibly useful. I'm still not convinced that what I'm going through will make me stronger, but I do see the power of my pain. Though I don't have a choice regarding this pain, if I were given the choice to either live a pain free life without a depth of passion, or live with greater passion and vision, but with a painful grimace on my face, I would think twice before choosing a pain free life. I have wondered in (ridiculous) hypotheticals, "What if it were up to me to save the world, but had to be in this condition to do it. How could I possibly justify choosing my own comfort in place of alleviating many others of their own agony?
I am reconsidering my approach to the ideas at the beginning of this post. Maybe we are stronger through suffering, but maybe stronger doesn't mean "fixed" or "better". Maybe stronger doesn't even mean we don't feel pain still. Maybe we are stronger not after our tears, but in our tears and as we weep... and maybe we aren't stronger after the suffering, but during the suffering.
Perhaps all this suffering is really an art. The art of conversion, converting the pain of tragedy into a power source of passion, healing, and deep, deep love.
