I truly, honest to God believe that we all (within reason and conceding some exceptions) experience the same highs and lows of pain in our lives. Because what I find to be true about emotions is that there's not really any kind of quantitative data or equation that can decipher or label what you're feeling and that everything is relative to each of our personal lives and time lines chocked full of experiences that build slight precedent (somewhat oxymoronically). Every experience is different and requires a case by case analysis, without doubt that you (and only you) as the individual feeling those things can diagnose.
...And that is why I always found comparing one person's pain to another's was/is absolutely asinine. Because while objectively, in looking at numbers and applying a sort of base set of values that most every culture shares, some events in this life may seem to have greater weight and lead to lower lows than others may experience... But I don't think life works like that. I know this sounds stupid, but humor me.
So say... there are two individuals: One is a young Japanese student in Japan, and the other a young impoverished woman in Africa.
The young man has always been pretty competent, but for one reason or another has just never been quite as smart as most of his buddies and classmates, not to mention his siblings and cousins... And he can never escape that reality. He plays games for temporary release, but at any family reunion or social event it is time and time gain throw in his face that he is sub-par, but he will not let it get him down. Not if he has any say on where life will take him. So he starts studying tirelessly day and night for the upcoming final exams and entrance exams that will quite honestly make or break his future and life- deciding whether he is fit for the next level of education, or destined to let his father and family name down as he resigns to a poor, honor-less life working in dead-end jobs that middle and upper-class people scoff and laugh at. So he works really hard, and he finds that before long he can truly notice his mind expanding and the numbers and eloquence of words coming more naturally to him... And yet, when the exams finally came, he did no better than he was projected to before. So not only does he not manage to get into any higher education schools, but his family is stricken with disappointment as the only son stains the family name. His whole life, in a flash at the hands of a scantron or two has been deemed an 18-year-long waste of investment and questions taking his own life. Is he wrong for doing this?
That's one bad scenario. Now let's look at another briefly- say the young African woman is trying diligently to be able to start a family with her husband as they live with her and his parents and grandparents in a cluster of mud-and-thatch huts... And for the third time, in this village of frequent famine and drought, she has a miscarriage. Does her pain trump his? Does death undeniably reach the precipice of pain? In my mind, and relatively applied, the answer is actually no. Of course we as a third party would compare the two, and given our cultural differences find that the young man considering ending his life is a drama queen or baby for doing so, and on the other side expect the African woman to be wracked with pain and loss when in reality, she could very possibly not be... And it's not because she doesn't care about her child that would have been, but rather that maybe due to health issues and village happenings, miscarriages are nothing to be distraught over, because sometimes those sorts of things just happen. Those women aren't quite as lucky. And yet again, we would contest the woman is worse off having experienced this thing. But I would say that to only see it that way is to essentially be blind. Because what fails to be taken into account is the quality of life. Yes she may have lost a child (or two, or three) but at the end of the day she still has a happy life that has in no way been taken from her, only delayed (if even that). Had she maybe lost her veteran hunter husband, or the lands that they sew into and reap then maybe then the losses would equate, but alas they do not. That young man literally has no value, and has lost the one thing that he was meant to have spent his whole entire life pursuing which is growing and upholding his family name etc. Risking redundancy, again, I know objectively we can all agree the loss of a potential human life is in most contexts greater than that of not being accepted into higher education, but when you stop trying to compare apples to oranges and consider the ways each culture (or context) puts a spin or emphasis on certain things, you can see that life is beautiful and really sucks for everyone, everywhere, across the board.
Yes it may absolutely suck to have a mental disability, but that in no way means (in my mind) that your quality of life is necessarily worse than one who does not. Just different. Problems and specific situations can always differ within fractions of percentage points of variation but the ways they affect us are still the same. I might have a lot of internal conflict and spend too much time in my head while my counterpart could be some thoughtless, insecure meat-head but that doesn't change that at the end of the day we both have problems with ourselves and are working to solve them.
Yeah it may suck to be poor, and a rich man may never know what it feels like to go to sleep for the umpteenth with a stomach growling and a cold wind creeping through his weathered knapsack. But a poor man doesn't know what it's like to have eyes constantly on him, watching from every corner and projecting every personal, emotional or significant moment of his life onto some gossipy magazine page or TV screen some time some where twenty-hours a day. One would be wise to keep from assuming pain (or I guess its causes) all have the same weights and values on a universal scale. Because they don't.
And in many ways that's both a comforting and condemning thing. Because that means that yes, you are in this way no longer alone in your pain, and most definitely have others that have not only been where you have been, but even if not, have felt what you have felt. But likewise, it means you have no excuse to wallow in all your pain and grieve beyond what is healthy. It means you have to go on living your life knowing that no, somebody does not have it worse than you, or better than you, but rather just plain different from you and you will surely feel a large majority of the same highs and lows that they do. Maybe not as frequently or notably- your glorious days might not get your name in the paper and your lows might not be like some horror-flick, but you will have them and feel them all the same.
And that's okay.
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