About 20 years ago, when I was a graduate student in Tucson, Arizona, I befriended two neighbors who worked as traveling nurses taking short-term jobs at hospitals in interesting places around the country. John and Sue had met a few years earlier when they served together in a busy metropolitan hospital, an often stressful environment.
They dealt with patients and family members who were pushed to their physical, mental, and emotional limitations; fairly frequently this reality erupted in unpleasant behavior toward nurses, the frontline caregivers. My friends described experiences of being yelled at, punched, and more while working in this setting. As you might imagine of people willing to move to a new hospital every few months, these two are adventurous, optimistic, compassionate, and tough, so they found positive ways to deal with their challenges.
When I met them, they had a long-standing shorthand for talking about unpleasant people. They explained the history of their catchphrase to me, but also helped me understand that over time they鈥檇 come to apply this analysis to people outside the hospital. If聽someone cut them off in traffic, acted like a jerk in a public place, or otherwise behaved obnoxiously,聽they鈥檇 look at each other and say, 鈥淪he鈥檚 in pain,鈥� or 鈥淗e鈥檚 in pain,鈥� chuckle a bit, and move on without taking the incident personally.
While pain doesn鈥檛 explain or justify every negative experience we have with our fellow humans, I do think that John and Sue were onto something here.
Despite the arguably substantial number of what psychologist Martha Stout calls 鈥渢he sociopath(s) next door,鈥� I would argue that many of the people we encounter in daily life are struggling with something painful, though our frequent phatic questions like 鈥淗ow are you?鈥� and 鈥淎re you having a good summer?鈥� rarely elicit the details of those challenges.
And while MIT professor Sherry Turkle, who has long studied human/computer interaction, argues that we find ourselves 鈥渁lone together鈥� on social media, I had to look no further than my Facebook account to find evidence of these struggles.
This week a close friend of mine is recovering (fantastically, bravely, but painfully) from a bilateral mastectomy. My classmate from junior high is mourning the sudden death of her father, and at least three of my contacts are worrying over pets with serious illnesses. One close friend is requesting prayer for her daughter, who is on a mission trip in an area hit hard by a recent typhoon. And everyone who teaches college (a big chunk of my social circle) is beginning to fret over the impending end of another too-short summer and the beginning of another crazy fall.
Meanwhile, more than one of my admittedly middle-aged network is in physical pain with an abscessed tooth or injured back. Of course, like anyone else鈥檚, my news feed is also full of joyful announcements of pregnancies, pictures from once-in-a-lifetime vacations, news about exciting new jobs and relationships, and, just now, the victorious end to the search for the perfect burrito.
So the humble point of this column is not to bring us all down and suggest that we鈥檙e constantly surrounded by secret misery. It鈥檚 just to remind others and myself to give people a break when we can.
Having taught college for almost 25 years, I have heard lots of classroom excuses, such as grandmothers who mysteriously manage to die twice in one year to every make and model of computer and transportation problem. A good number of them have been true; a smaller but not inconsequential portion have been dubious at best, but I do not regret a single time when I have given a grieving or stressed-out person a kind response, a bit of perspective, a little break. And I can think of some instances where I wish I鈥檇 been more compassionate, patient, and engaged.
But if I鈥檓 going to buy into the 鈥減eople are in pain; give them a break鈥� mindset, and encourage others to do so, I have to apply it to myself and recognize that there are good reasons from my own life why I鈥檝e been unable to be my ideal self in many situations.
A few days ago I was short-tempered with a seemingly disorganized host at a local restaurant.听When I stopped to think about it, I realized I was being unnecessarily grouchy because I was in pain. Not emergency room pain, of course鈥攏ot physical pain or even emotional anguish鈥攂ut discomfort and disappointment, however mild, along with underlying worries that I needed to release.
I thought in that moment, as I often do, of my friends John and Sue, and about the importance of letting things go, laughing things off, and moving on.听
That awareness (along with the perfect burrito) is my wish for everyone.
Melody Bowdon is executive director of 麻豆原创鈥檚 Karen L. Smith Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning and is a professor of writing and rhetoric.听She can be reached at melody@ucf.edu.听